In episode #245 of The Grant – the EU funding podcast, I visit the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen for an in-person conversation with Nicoline Joy Haas and Lone Friboe Garde from Creative Europe Desk Denmark. Nicoline works with the Culture strand, covering cultural sectors outside the audiovisual field, while Lone works with the MEDIA strand, supporting areas including film, TV series and video games. Together, they explain how the Creative Europe Desks act as the link between the programme and potential applicants: informing organisations about opportunities, helping them assess whether an idea fits, offering one-to-one guidance and application feedback, and facilitating international connections and matchmaking. We also look at what makes the Culture and MEDIA strands different, what a strong application requires, and why one of the desk’s most important jobs is often simply to translate the language and logic of EU funding into something cultural and creative organisations can actually work with.

Time codes:

00:00 Arrival in Copenhagen

05:47 Guest introduction and fly in

08:22 The Company and the Story Behind

16:35 Experience with Funded Projects

39:12 Help and Support

44:40 What Have You Learned?

49:47 Future

52:33 Reflections and The Toughest Challenge