For Newhouse Professor Sean Branagan, ScreenME-Net Summit in Estonia Marks Culmination of Fulbright Work

In September 2023 I traveled to Tallinn, Estonia, to deliver a keynote talk at the ScreenME-Net Summit on Media Entrepreneurship. ScreenME is an international network of universities across Europe that aim to improve research into and teaching of entrepreneurship for the screen media industry. For me, my time at the summit was the culmination of two years of collaboration and building programs. 

I received a Fulbright Grant in late 2021 to work with Estonian universities in the ScreenME network cultivating media entrepreneurship programs. In May and June of 2022, I completed that work in the capital city of Tallinn, conducting student meetings, workshops, presentations to faculty and a conference in the heart of Tallinn’s startup scene with my sponsor, Dr. Ulrike Rohm of Tallinn University’s Baltic Film and Media School (BFM).

Estonia is a small country with a reputation for being the most digital country in Europe, and it has a robust startup economy with more “unicorns”—startups with billion dollar valuations—per capita than any other country! For me, there was no better place to work and promote media entrepreneurship. 

In the midst of it all, I fell in love with Tallinn: A picture postcard city with a pristine, medieval Old Town along with palaces, churches and architecture from the Russian Empire—mixed with grey, utilitarian Soviet buildings—renewed and reborn by the robust Tallinn art community.

That summer in Estonia was seminal for me. I long understood how the media entrepreneurship I teach my students at the Newhouse School can empower creative people, but I also saw how it can be an economic driver and purposeful in a community that rallies around it.

I left Tallinn in 2022 with opportunities to connect activities there to U.S. media and startups. When I returned in this past fall, it really was the pinnacle of two years of work helping BFM and the other ScreenME universities understand how we teach entrepreneurship as a creative endeavor at Newhouse and why it fits creative students in all their schools. 

During my keynote, I jumped around the stage with excitement about all the technologies and new developments creating opportunities for the creator economy and media entrepreneurs. I talked about our terrific, talented and successful Newhouse students and young alumni who are off building this future. I presented one slide that compared today to 2007 when the iPhone and many technologies and digital services were launched; so many technologies and services have disrupted and shaped all forms of media and I think the media industry is ready for disruption again. 

At the summit, I met researchers, faculty and administration from more than eight universities across Europe —all starting or wanting to start media entrepreneurship programs for their creative students. All were interested in what we’re doing at Newhouse. 

Our discussions, which included possibilities of student exchange programs, collaboration on research and possibly running simultaneous virtual classes in Syracuse and in locations across northern Europe, made me eager and excited for the future.