Our guests from the ECREA Executive Board and the event agency C-IN had a chance to explore the AU campus, the city center and partners’ locations in Aarhus where the ECREA 2022 conference will take place from 19 to 22 October 2022. Among our guests were John Downey (President of ECREA), Zlatan Krajina (ECREA Treasurer) and Tereza Krobova (ECREA office) as well as Daniel Švarc and Monika Valterová from C-IN.

The first day of the site visit on November 11 was dedicated to an all-day business meeting around core planning elements and tasks when hosting the conference. ECREA and C-IN have collaborated since the European Communication Conference (ECC) 2016 in Prague and have built a robust division of tasks and a reliable submissions and registrations system. The day ended with the official signing of the contract between ECREA and the School of Communication and Culture, represented by Per Stounbjerg as Head of the School and John Downey, President of ECREA.

The second day’s program offered two tours, one around campus locations and one around the city of Aarhus. The campus tour was led by the conference manager at the Faculty of Arts, Gitte Grønning Munk together with Christoph Raetzsch, Chair of the Local Organizing Committee. The tour around Aarhus city was led by Anne Lind Vidkjær from Visit Aarhus and Anne Marit Waade, Head of the Department and Vice-Chair of the Local Organising Committee.

“Together with Visit Aarhus, we had a nice tour of important partner locations in the city such as Dokk1 and the Rethinkers volunteer program. We also had a look at the central campus locations around the Lake Auditoriums and the Aula, where ECREA will take place in 2022,” said Christoph Raetzsch.

Dokk1 is the landmark public library and center of public culture in Aarhus at the harbor. Other than Dokk1, our guests also visited the art museum, Aros, known for its rooftop rainbow panorama by artist Olafur Eliasson. They also paid a visit to the city’s concert hall and the creative and urban area called Aarhus K. At the end of the day, both groups had lunch at the headquarters of the Rethinker volunteer program at GeLinde. The Rethinker program is an outcome of Aarhus being the European Capital of Culture in 2017 and is now supported by Visit Aarhus and local partners. Rethinkers and student volunteers from AU will be important partners in hosting the conference and welcoming participants to the city in 2022.
 

Rethink Impact

The theme of the ECREA conference of 2022 is “Rethink Impact” which resonates with previous initiatives in Aarhus as well as core challenges in media and communication research and education. The organizers presented the theme of how it is already practiced and interpreted in Aarhus, emphasizing the legacy the conference can have both in the research and the local city community. Among the local partners for hosting ECREA 2022 in Aarhus are the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX), Dokk 1, and Folkeuniversitet.

“Aarhus University, the city community of cultural institutions and media industry partners as well as citizens and students are all involved to shape the conference and welcome the European ECREA community of media and communication scholars for the first time in a Nordic country,” Christoph Raetzsch explains.
 

Want to know more?

You can read more about next year’s theme Rethink Impact here: https://conferences.au.dk/ecrea2022/rethink-impact/

The conference’s call for papers has already been published and is available at: https://conferences.au.dk/ecrea2022/call-for-papers/. The deadline for submission of abstracts to ECREA is 17 January 2022.