Ars Electronica Festival: Tinkertank—Forge of Hope / Ryan Jenkins (US), Thomas Kühn (DE), Johannes May (DE), Photo: tom mesic

Ars Electronica, BMBWF and OeAD have redesigned the renowned Media Literacy Award (MLA) for media education. Starting in 2025, the MLA will honor particularly innovative and creative media education projects from Austrian schools.

Open Call

To all teachers in Austria: Submit a project now by March 10, 2025 and win workshops worth up to €2,000!

Submit now!

Ars Electronica Festival: create your world, Photo: flap

Timetable

November 7, 2024 – March 10, 2025Submission phase for MLA 2024/2025
April 2025Jury meeting
Summer 2025Publication of the award winners
September 3-7, 2025Award ceremony and program at the 2025 Ars Electronica Festival
November 2025Submission phase for MLA 2025/2026 begins

The MLA Awards Ceremony will take place in the inspiring setting of the create your world festival, Ars Electronica’s festival of the future for the next generation. For over 40 years, Ars Electronica has been exploring the interaction between art, technology and society.

Ars Electronica Festival: Tinkertank—Forge of Hope / Ryan Jenkins (US), Thomas Kühn (DE), Johannes May (DE), Photo: tom mesic

Held annually in Austria, the Ars Electronica Festival is the world’s most important event for digital art, technological developments and their socio-cultural and scientific reflection. Honoring MLA winners in this context gives new visibility to Austrian creative projects in education.

Ars Electronica Festival: create your world, Photo: flap

Submitting a project to the MLA simultanously provides access to Ars Electronica’s extensive network—as ambassadors for ideas and projects in media-pedagogical education, participants receive invitations to events, exhibition openings and special programs of Ars Electronica. This ensures active participation and staying up-to-date with the latest developments in the fields of digitality and media in education.

Powerplayground / Johannes Ambrosch (AT), Marlene Noggler (AT), Daniel Otto (AT), Helwin Prohaska (AT), Florian Rudinger (AT), Andreas Stojanovic (AT), Photo: vog.photo

Award for media education

The award recognizes particularly innovative and creative educational projects in the fields of media education and digital learning. These can be single class projects or initiatives that span multiple classes and grade levels. Submitted projects should aim to:

Awarding particularly innovative educational/school projects and concepts

The increasingly complex educational landscape of the digital age makes innovative educational approaches more important than ever. The Media Literacy Award (MLA) aims to encourage the exploration of new teaching methods and resources, as well as the discovery of new content areas by means of a competition for media education in the 21st century. We invite teachers and students from all types of schools and grade levels to share their educational projects and concepts within the framework of the MLA—because together we shape the future of education.

Student nominations

Students are also explicitly encouraged to nominate particularly inspiring educational projects that have had a lasting impact on them. Relevant projects can be submitted via email to mla@ars.electronica.art (with a brief description of the project, contact details of the teacher who implemented it, and an explanation of why this project should definitely be submitted). The MLA team will then contact the teacher and ask them to submit their educational project.

PodcastLab / create your world (AT), c3 (HU), InSync Youth and Family Services (IE), mb21 (DE), Only Tomorrow Association (RO), Photo: tom mesic

Prizes

The Media Literacy Award (MLA) offers one Grand Prize, two Awards of Distinction, one Special Prize for digital learning, and four Honorary Mentions: