Sphera Media Lab
The European Gathering for Independent Media
December 3rd, 9:00 – 23:00
LaVallée, Brussels
Sphera Media Lab, the independent media forum organised by Sphera Network and European Lab , is coming back to LaVallée in Brussels on December 3rd.
Bringing together media professionals from across Europe, this day will be dedicated to collectively exploring how independent media can strengthen their practices, expand their communities, and defend the freedoms on which their work depends.
With workshops, masterclasses, keynotes, screenings & networking opportunities, participants will reflect on the current challenges faced by the independent media sector.
10:30 – 12:30
Workshop · On Radios: Economic Independence and Cooperative Models
Independent, non-profit radio stations sit at the heart of creative communities across Europe—incubating new music, supporting local artists, and providing a platform for voices that commercial and public broadcasters overlook. Yet their economic models remain precarious, dependent on a patchwork of short-term grants, volunteer labour, and inconsistent public funding.
Drawing on research and case studies from the Independent Community Radio Network (ICRN) and the Reset! Network Community Radio Working Group research, this workshop examines how non-profit community radio stations across Europe are navigating the question of economic sustainability. It presents a range of real-world approaches—from membership and donor models to earned-income strategies and cross-sector partnerships—highlighting both their potential and their limits.
The workshop argues that diversified income alone cannot solve the sector’s structural funding gap. Community radio needs dedicated, sector-specific funding mechanisms that recognise its distinct role within the wider cultural and creative ecosystem — not as a subset of media policy alone, but as vital infrastructure for music, art, and grassroots creative communities. The session will close with concret
With:
Samantha Lippett (ICNR)
Bettina Bence (Lahmacun Radio, ICRN)
10:30 – 11:00
Keynote · When Gaza Started Reporting Itself
Since October 2023, reporting from Gaza has unsettled some of the conventional boundaries of journalism. With foreign journalists largely unable to report independently from inside Gaza and local journalists working under extraordinary conditions, another form of reporting has become increasingly visible: people documenting the war while simultaneously living through it.
This keynote looks at how citizen and civilian reporting has changed not only who reports Gaza, but also what becomes reportable. Alongside airstrikes, casualties and destruction, social media accounts began documenting food, displacement, tents, neighbourhoods, family relations, humour, exhaustion, waiting and attempts to maintain ordinary life. Gaza appeared not only as a site of catastrophe, but as a lived society.
This shift also raises difficult ethical questions. What happens when the witness, journalist, source and survivor are the same person? How do we think about verification, consent, safety, authorship and editorial responsibility? What happens when European media organisations depend on images and testimonies produced by people living through the events they document?
With: Hala Alnaji (Multidisciplinary Architect, Artist-Researcher, Educator and Curator)
10:30 – 11:30
Talk • Самиздат to Federation: Building Independent Media on Community-Owned Infrastructure
Under censorship, samizdat survived because no single copy mattered: texts were retyped, passed hand to hand, held by many people, and located in different places at once. That principle feels newly relevant.
In the first half of 2026 alone, the Media Freedom Rapid Response documented 736 attacks affecting 1,174 journalists and media professionals across Europe, ranging from physical and verbal attacks to legal pressure and deliberate obstruction of reporting. Journalistic data and anonymous sources are increasingly at risk, particularly online. MFRR
This masterclass takes a lesson from Bulgaria’s samizdat, self-publishing and DIY cultures and applies it to the infrastructure of journalism today. It introduces federation, the open protocols behind networks such as Bluesky and the fediverse, as a way for media to own their work and their relationship with readers, move between hosts without losing either, and distribute journalism in ways that make it harder to erase.
The case study is Open Newsrooms, an open-source project by Sofia-based Resonator Foundation, built on the AT Protocol and shaped together with independent media across Europe.
Federation is more than a technical fix. It raises questions of ownership, governance, resilience and cross-border cooperation that matter as much as the code.
Participants will leave with a quick map of their own platform dependencies, a simple portability test for their current tools, and a concrete path toward collaboration through the Open Newsrooms working group and the emerging European consortium.
With: Desislava Pantcheva (Strategic Programming & Partnerships at Resonator Foundation, Founder of Artonomy Foundation and Co-founder of Hip Hip Library)
11:00 – 11:30
Keynote • Karakutu: When Censorship Becomes the Evidence
What a regime erases tells you what it fears
When journalism is erased, censored, or pushed out of reach, preserving it becomes an essential part of protecting press freedom.
This keynote will introduce Karakutu, a civic-tech project that uses blockchain technology to permanently preserve Turkish digital media content and make censorship visible. Inspired by the black box of an aircraft, Karakutu creates a durable public record of journalism that might otherwise be erased, while making valuable sources accessible to journalists, researchers, and citizens.
Here, digital archive can become not just a repository but a tool for investigation, accountability, and collective memory. By documenting not only what was published but also what was removed, altered, or censored, Karakutu offers a way to examine the mechanisms of information control.
With:Viera Zuborova (CORRECTIV.Exile)
11:30 – 12:00
Keynote • Developping a Comparison Tool to Cover Elections
How can independent media help citizens navigate an election without reducing political choice to rankings, polls, or simplified scores?
Komune is building a comparison tool for the 2027 French presidential election that holds about 30 candidates against more than 200 laws, decrees and parliamentary texts. For each one, it sets what a candidate promises today beside what they actually did: how they voted, which amendments they filed, what they did in office. Every claim is sourced to a named document : a roll-call vote, a floor debate, a published programme.
That confrontation is where the work gets difficult. A candidate who voted one way in 2021 and another in 2026 may have changed their mind and said so, which is coherent. Another may have changed their vote while keeping the same discourse, which is not. Only the promise-versus-action comparison makes that difference visible.
This keynote will present how we built the tool and the editorial rules that hold it together: how we choose a reference vote when a text crossed both chambers nine times, what we write when a candidate has never spoken on a subject, and why we say so rather than infer. Readers see what is documented, what is still being verified, and how each conclusion was reached.
The tool also offers several ways in, by candidate, by issue, or by starting from a situation in the reader’s own life.
Technology makes this possible at scale. It does not make it true. We will discuss what we learned about keeping a data product accountable to journalistic standards — including the mistakes we made, and what caught them.
With: Jeannette Marié (Komune Media)
11:45 – 12:45
Masterclass • Digital Modelling as an Investigation Tool
How can digital modelling help us investigate events that are difficult to access, witness, or reconstruct? And what happens when visualisation becomes a method of producing evidence rather than simply illustrating it?
This masterclass will explore how digital models can support investigative research by reconstructing spaces, analysing complex events, and making hidden or contested realities more visible. Drawing on the methods of forensic and visual investigation, the session will examine how spatial data, architectural modelling, and digital tools can be used to connect fragments of evidence and build accounts of what happened.
With: Georgia Skartadou (Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens)
12:30 – 14:00
Sphera’s Independent Media Mapping
Who are the people and organisations working on similar issues across Europe? Who could inspire you, challenge your thinking or become a future collaborator?
Médianes and Krytyka Polityczna, as part of the Sphera Network, led and created a mapping of media and engaged creators aims to strengthen the ecosystem of independent and engaged information producers across Europe. It covers all 46 Council of Europe member states, plus Kosovo and Belarus, and brings together independent media and socially engaged content creators working on youth-related topics, sheds light on how they operate, and opens up concrete opportunities for collaboration.
Join the mapping to discover your peers, exchange experiences and explore what we can learn from one another. Because knowing who is out there, in your own country or elsewhere in Europe, is a first step towards working better together.
To close the session, we’ll invite you to meet your neighbours and imagine together what the mapping could look like if it came to life!
On invite ony.
14:00 – 15:00
Speedmeeting
Come and spend an inspiring afternoon in the company of key-players from the European independent media sector.
15:00 – 16:30
Workshop • New tools, new challenges, new revenues : a workshop on donations
Donations are a pillar of many independent media outlets, but also of well-established ones such as The Guardian who counts 1.4 million recurring digital supporters, but it’s only one example among dozens of others. Giving can be a key driver of a news outlet’s economic development, but it remains fragile, mainly because it requires nurturing the relationships built with your community.
Moreover, AI and changing habits are reshaping how audiences find and consume news, and Big Tech platforms are taking up more and more of their attention. To stay independent, media outlets need to own their tools and build direct relationships with their communities.
Since 2020, Médianes has advised and supported media outlets in France and Europe with one goal: independence, whether editorial, economic or technological. We have helped launch several outlets and helped others raise the funds they need to get started or keep going. As part of this work, Médianes developed Socle Dons, a tool for collecting and managing one-off and recurring donations for media outlets.
With: Baptiste Thevelein (Médianes)
15:00 – 16:00
Masterclass • Feminist Media, AI-Generated Content, Virality, and Access to Information
What happens to feminist media when AI-generated content and algorithmic “viral” formats reshape how audiences access information? And can independent media learn to work with algorithms without becoming subordinate to them?
Drawing on six years of experimentation at Lazy Women, this masterclass explores the practical tensions between editorial integrity, audience reach, and platform dependency. It looks at how social media algorithms influence editorial decisions, the realities of shadowbanning—particularly for feminist and political content—and the strategies independent media can develop to remain visible without compromising their values.
Through examples of campaigns and pieces that achieved significant reach while maintaining a clear editorial voice, the session will explore how compelling, shareable content can be created without allowing “what performs” to become the sole editorial criterion. It will also offer practical principles for developing a social-first editorial strategy that builds engagement without relying on clickbait or turning media into a content-producing factory.
The masterclass will leave space for an open discussion of the frustrations, contradictions, and creative possibilities of platform-dependent media—and of what it takes to stay independent in an algorithmically shaped information landscape.
With: Teodora Strugaru & Zsofi Borsi (Lazy Women)
15:00 – 16:00
Roundtable • Editorial Independence and the Magazine as a Counter-Archive
Independent media play a crucial role in shaping what gets remembered, who gets to tell the story, and which forms of knowledge remain visible. Editorial work can be more than the production of news: it can be a way of preserving cultural memory, reclaiming narrative legitimacy, and building infrastructures that allow communities to document themselves.
This roundtable explores how independent media can act as counter-archives—creating spaces where overlooked histories, cultural practices, and lived experiences are documented, contextualised, and kept accessible beyond the news cycle. It asks how editorial choices shape collective memory, whose knowledge is considered legitimate, and how independent media can challenge dominant narratives without reproducing the same structures of exclusion.
The discussion will also examine the infrastructures that make this work possible. From archives and shared digital tools to collective forms of stewardship, technological independence is not simply about owning or controlling a platform. It can also mean building interdependent systems in which knowledge, resources, and responsibilities are shared.
With: Vera Zalutskaya (MOST Magazine),
Jack Murray-Brown (ICRN / Refuge Worldwide),
Arysia Chernobai (Lyuk Media)
16:00 – 16:30
Keynote • Protecting Your Website as an Independent Media
For independent media, protecting a website is not only about security. It is also about protecting the people who visit it, the journalists who rely on it, and the independence of the newsroom itself. Drawing on the experience of Medfeminiswiya, this keynote will explore how independent media can make thoughtful technological choices to build a safer and more resilient website—while working within real-world budget and resource constraints. From hosting and infrastructure to the technologies and services that support a website, the session will look at how technical decisions can contribute to protecting both audiences and the media outlet itself. Rather than presenting a one-size-fits-all solution, the keynote will share lessons and practical considerations from an independent media project: what to prioritise, where to invest, and how to build a level of protection that remains realistic for an independent / small newsroom.
With: Safaa Boubia (Medfeminiswiya)
16:45 – 18:00
Participative Talk • In or Out of Digital? Community Building as a Media
What happens when independent media step outside the screen and meet their audiences in real life? Journalism is increasingly shaped by platforms, metrics, and fragmented attention, so can physical encounters help rebuild trust, strengthen communities, and make media more sustainable?
This conversation brings together three experiences of community-building beyond digital publishing: StreetPress’s Club, which turns readers into active supporters and participants in the life of the newsroom; n-ost’s kitchen talks, where journalists, media professionals, and audiences gather around a table to discuss journalism and its impact; and Denník N’s events, which bring readers into direct contact with the people and ideas behind the news.
The discussion will ask what independent media gain by going offline: Does meeting readers in person deepen trust? Can events become a form of journalism in their own right? How can physical communities support editorial independence and long-term sustainability? And what can media learn from the people who show up, listen, question, and choose to stay?
With: Martin Bodrero (StreetPress)
Joanna Kopacka (n-ost)
Tomáš Bella (Dennik N)
Moderator: Agathe Kupfer (Médianes)
18:55 – 19:55
Premiere • Press Freedom Documentary
Attend a screening premiere.
20:00 – 20:45
Talk • Reporting as an Act of Resistance
Independent journalism is increasingly practiced under pressure. Political interference, legal threats, economic constraints, intimidation, and attacks on journalists can restrict their ability to investigate, challenge power, and report freely. Yet across Europe and beyond, journalists continue to defend their right to tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. As these pressures take new and increasingly sophisticated forms, the need for stronger safeguards and solidarity around independent journalism has never been more urgent. Protecting media independence and journalists’ safety is essential not only to press freedom, but to the public’s right to know and to the health of our political settings. Supporting those who report means defending the space for accountability and diverse voices to exist.
With: Thodoris Chondrogiannos (Inside Story)
Hélène Servel (independent journalist)
Moderator: Andreas Lamm, ECPMF
20:45 – 22:45
Networking Drinks & Music
Open to all.