Yes, of course. Knowledge transfer is not static, but multidirectional; it only becomes meaningful through this interaction. The university can contribute certain priority dimensions, such as the ones you mentioned, which enter into dialogue with the sectors involved and others to which these initiatives are open, as evidenced by our company and institutional chairs. We need to abandon the concept of the university as simply a centre that radiates outwards and accept that it also learns from others. It is in this interaction that consolidated and tangible progress is made. In the process, everything is transformed, including research, teaching, culture, and the very idea of innovation. And that applies to all areas: it is a question of reconsidering distance and attitude, demonstrating that the university can be a driver of regenerative principles and an ally of other community spaces that are also interested in transformation processes.

We need to abandon the concept of the university as simply a centre that radiates outwards and accept that it also learns from others

The Diari de Barcelona case is a great example of everything we have said so far and everything at the heart of the EDvolution project. In response to a simple but detailed proposal – ‘we propose a newspaper that is produced by students but is not a student newspaper’ – the Barcelona City Council decided, with unanimity across party lines, to grant the historic Diari de Barcelona masthead to UPF. It surely had many other offers, but UPF was proposing something unique: to give a voice to a generation, to experiment with new journalistic formats backed by years and years of experience in the Integrated Newsroom, and to create a digital medium open to all communication disciplines.

We now have a Diari de Barcelona with a social impact and constant transmission throughout the territory, one that has a different outlook and experiments with multiplatform elements

We now have a Diari de Barcelona with a social impact and constant transmission throughout the territory, one that has a different outlook and experiments with multiplatform elements. After just one year, it has already received the Jaume Vicens i Vives award for excellence in university teaching. As EDvolution proposes, the Diari de Barcelona is a form of teaching, but also cultural creation and, especially, transfer. Its vitality is due to its extremely lively relationship with its surroundings, and to an internal organization model that combines various actors in constant experimental transformation. As one of the students who worked to found it said, ‘We have gone from talking about the Diari de Barcelona in history of journalism classes to making it ourselves.’

In the bit more than a year that it took to design the Tallers area, we imagined that as the transformed spaces opened, new uses and even new layers of meaning would emerge. Interestingly, the first of these new spaces to open – the one we are in now – was occupied the very first day, at 9 a.m., by students and other members of the university community. There was no need to make any announcements, send out any newsletters or put up any signs. And they have been reinterpreting it ever since. For example, they have a fantastic self-management system that does not require reservations: people come here, use the spaces and reinterpret them. From there, each layer adds a new meaning, which is where we are now. Obviously, it is a meeting place where students can do their own work. It is also a place for teaching practicals. It is a place of research, a place of interaction between research and teaching, and, right now, an exhibition venue, as well as a screening room. So, these are rooms for creating in the broadest sense of the term. Another layer that is also quite present now is that of its opening up to the professional world and the world of the people, from the neighbourhood and beyond. In this sense, I think it is an example of how, sometimes, spaces can have their own sort of charm. That’s what happened with this space, which people make their own, adding new elements of meaning to it. And once the whole operation is complete – there is still one part left to be opened – I think then we will have this question. In the Tallers area, we have never talked about the future, just the present. No one is waiting to see what will come next; instead, we have to make the most of what we have now.

But each of these spaces generates new layers of potential uses and external relations: spaces for students to work and create, research and creative laboratory spaces, spaces for alumni integration, an exhibition centre and spaces for a new relationship with professional and citizen initiatives.

Absolutely, and we have our first proof. La Galeria [The Gallery] is an exhibition space in transit, which is exactly what the architectural meaning of its name suggests. It was inaugurated with an exhibition interna que combina agents diversoses comunicativesiversitat de Paris 8, ra, els estudiants i altres memebres d ela comunitat u by Joan Fontcuberta, as a result of our deep relationship with the Vila-Casas Foundation and Joan’s generosity and constant relationship with university research. Indeed, the day the exhibition closed, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis. In the future, the space will be open to new exhibitions resulting from a variety of initiatives, always retaining its experimental nature, such as the one on the artist and designer Jordi Cano, who was a lecturer in the Advertising and Public Relations programme.

La Galeria is an exhibition space in transit, which is exactly what the architectural meaning of its name suggests

The En Construcció [Work in Progress] room, on the other hand, is intended as a screening room and place for debate and will have various uses. We have begun with an agreement with the producer associations to let them use the room as a place to screen unfinished audiovisual works that they would like to test with small groups, including students. In exchange, the producers have agreed to set up mentoring processes in our university community and engage in other forms of cooperation in our labs, to give professional impetus to emerging audiovisual projects of all genres.

Both editions have fully met our expectations. The selected projects have managed to develop, enhance their quality and build bridges for professional relationships. ‘En Residència’ is an idea that can be instantly grasped: to open a physical space, but also a virtual one, centred on the Tallers area, designed to facilitate the reincorporation of alumni, together with other people not necessarily from UPF, with a transdisciplinary creative project and the support of experts in all fields.

The RIS3CAT project marks a turning point in the relationship between university research and the impact on the world of cultural enterprises or industries. It can sometimes be difficult to define what transfer is, but this is top-level transfer. Because each of these projects brings together a university – in this case, us, UPF – and private companies, as well as public institutions, to create a specific consortium to apply certain innovation criteria in the field of culture. This is a fundamental idea, because it is not clientelist, but a consortium. We, the institution, have just as much interest as the companies in seeing this project go forward because we are all on the same level of collaboration; no one has hired anyone else.

In this regard, the four projects we are participating in – Edvidence, Nanomoocs, Engagement and Mironins – bring together different institutions from the publishing world, the world of museums, and different companies and, in this sense, really create four innovation models that could potentially be implemented as a major step forward in all these institutions. Right now, we are in the final phase of implementation: almost all these projects end between late April and late July 2022. The most interesting part is their potential to be benchmarks for companies and institutions, for our university to continue implementing them, and for them to be models that can be transferred from one place to another. We are making the shift from a pilot test to definitive implementation.

The pandemic has highlighted the need to transform the mechanisms through which museums relate to their publics. It has thus provided a great conceptual boost to the objectives of the Engagement project, which seeks to singularize the user experience and establish a circular model that connects virtual visits, in-person visits, data collection on individual choices and a form of engagement intended to make the relationship between museums and the public continuous rather than sporadic.

The pandemic has highlighted the need to transform the mechanisms through which museums relate to their publics

These new challenges raise the need to change cultural institutions’ internal organizational processes and their relationship with the different communities. With the participation of such key museums as the MNAC and Tàpies Foundation, we hope this model will also benefit other museums and cultural centres.

They are three transfer hubs that have transformed Catalan cinema and set international trends. The master’s degree programme in Creative Documentary has promoted 36 documentary films that have been major milestones in revolutionizing cinéma vérité and film in general, from En construcció, in 2000, to Sis dies corrents, in 2021.

The master’s degree programme in Creative Documentary has provided the impetus for 36 documentary films that have been major milestones in revolutionizing cinéma vérité and film in general

The films to come out of final projects for the bachelor’s degree programme in Audiovisual Communication, such as Les amigues de l’Àgata, Júlia Ist or Yo la busco, have created a school for the new generation of women filmmakers, just as the four women screenwriters behind Les de l’hoquei have proved it is possible to write a screenplay as a bachelor’s degree final project and turn it into a successful television series, offering a new gender and generational perspective. Meanwhile, the postgraduate degree programme in Video Editing is helping to produce a generation of women editors of huge importance in today’s cinema, due to their deep-rooted film culture and the fact that they, too, are considered filmmakers.

In both the field of documentary film and the realistic fiction that has largely come out of UPF and other schools and universities, the presence of women filmmakers has been a consequence of the ability to influence the routines of traditional systems that had marginalized women’s talent.

Today, Catalan cinema is better than ever thanks to the incorporation of new women filmmakers who have brought a fresh perspective to how projects are conceived

When the Dones Visuals [Visual Women] movement, a true catalyst for this renewal, was launched, they did not mince words: ‘Cinema needs us.’ And then, along comes a year like 2022, which has already seen the release of film phenomena such as Libertad by Clara Roquet, Sis dies corrents by Neus Ballús, and Alcarràs by Carla Simón, amongst others, and it completely ratifies this principle. Today, Catalan cinema is better than ever thanks to the incorporation of new women filmmakers who have brought a fresh perspective to how projects are conceived. And this continues and will continue.

Nothing we can do will ever be enough, because of the glaring inequality at the start. But the three degree programmes that make up the Faculty of Communication have worked to balance the presence of women lecturers in search of equality, and the number of women who now hold positions of responsibility in the faculty and department management has grown, too. This has an impact on teaching, with specific content that shines a spotlight on trail-blazing women creators and academics. In the past, the history of cinema was told with a canon that did not include any women filmmakers. Fortunately, that is no longer possible. These decisive steps will allow us to begin to remedy a situation that was, and remains, unacceptable.