HERODOT Network for Geography: movie competition

The HERODOT Network’s Geography Movie Competition of 2007/8 stands as one of the more imaginative outreach projects undertaken by a European geography education body in the late 2000s. Run in partnership with EGEA — the European Geography Student Association — the competition invited students to express geographical ideas through short film, and it drew enough public attention that, by the organisers’ own account, more than 6,000 people viewed the submitted videos during a single week in January. The winners and runners-up were then invited to carry geography’s flag to the Big Hope Youth Congress in Liverpool, staged as part of the city’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008.

For anyone working in higher geography education today, the competition is worth revisiting not as nostalgia but as a case study. It shows what happens when a disciplinary network treats students as producers of geographical knowledge rather than only as consumers of it, and it raises questions — about assessment, about media literacy, about inclusion — that are more pressing now than they were then.

Key Takeaways

• The 2007/8 HERODOT–EGEA Geography Movie Competition used short film to let students communicate geography to a public audience, not just to a lecturer.
• Its judging and promotion model — peer association involvement, public viewing, and a real-world prize (the Big Hope Youth Congress in Liverpool) — anticipated many features of today’s authentic, audience-facing assessment.
• The three recognised entries came from Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, reflecting the network’s pan-European reach.
• Video-based work is powerful for fieldwork, place-based learning and public geography, but it carries real costs in time, equipment, consent and accessibility that departments must plan for.
• The competition’s legacy is best understood as a template: a low-stakes, high-visibility way to connect student creativity with the wider geographical community.

What the Competition Actually Was

HERODOT — the network for geography in higher education in Europe — has long functioned as a hub connecting university geography departments, teacher trainers and education researchers across the continent. EGEA, its student counterpart, organises congresses, exchanges and regional events for geography students. The movie competition sat at the intersection of the two: a network initiative that handed creative control to students.

The brief was deliberately open. Students produced short videos on geographical themes, and the resulting films were published and viewed online. The organisers reported that more than 6,000 people watched the videos between 17 and 23 January, a striking figure for a niche educational project in an era before video platforms were ubiquitous in teaching.

The results recognised three entries:

• 1st place: Patricia Spiegler (Pécs, Hungary) — Earth, adventure and things like that
• Runner-up: Alena Vondráková (Olomouc, Czech Republic) — We love GEOGRAPHY
• Runner-up: Susanne Koolhof and Matthias Demuzere (Groningen, Netherlands) — Journey Through Geography

The prize was not a cash award but access: winners and runners-up attended the Big Hope Youth Congress in Liverpool, itself part of the 2008 Capital of Culture programme, where they promoted geography to a wider audience. That choice of prize is telling. It rewarded students with a platform and a network rather than a trophy.

Why a Film Competition Is Serious Pedagogy

It is easy to file a movie competition under “outreach” and move on. That would undersell it. Asking students to make a short film about geography requires them to do several cognitively demanding things at once:

• Select and compress. A three-minute film forces a decision about what the single most important geographical idea is — a discipline-building act in itself.
• Translate. Students must convert specialist vocabulary (glacial retreat, urban morphology, migration systems) into language and images a general viewer can follow. This is the same skill that underpins public geography and science communication.
• Sequence and argue. Editing is argumentation. What comes first, what is juxtaposed with what, and what is left out all shape the claim being made.
• Work as a team. Most entries are collaborative, which surfaces the project-management and negotiation skills that group fieldwork also demands.

In assessment terms, this is close to what education researchers call authentic or performance assessment: a task with a real audience and a real product, rather than an exam answer read only by a marker. The competition’s public viewing week was, in effect, its moderation process — the work had to stand up in front of strangers.

Designing a Video Task: A Practical Framework

If you want to run something similar — whether as a module assessment, a departmental competition or a recruitment tool — the 2007/8 model offers a useful starting point, but it needs updating for current conditions. The following criteria help structure decisions.

Design decision	Options	Trade-offs to weigh
Length	60 seconds / 3 minutes / 5+ minutes	Shorter forces clarity but can flatten nuance; longer allows depth but loses casual viewers
Theme	Open brief vs. set theme	Open brief maximises creativity; a set theme (e.g. “water and the city”) makes entries comparable and easier to judge
Team size	Individual vs. small group	Individual work is fairer to assess; groups build collaboration but complicate grading
Audience	Internal (class) vs. public (online)	Public raises motivation and stakes but requires consent, moderation and accessibility planning
Judging	Staff panel vs. peer vote vs. mixed	Peer voting engages students but can reward popularity over quality; a mixed model balances both
Prize	Recognition vs. travel/network access	Network access (as in 2007/8) has lasting value; material prizes are simpler to administer

A few practical rules of thumb:

• Cap the length aggressively. Three minutes is generous for a first attempt. Anything longer invites padding and makes judging slow.
• Publish clear technical specs. Resolution, file format and aspect ratio should be fixed in advance so entries can be screened without conversion headaches.
• Separate content from production values. A judging rubric that rewards geographical insight, clarity and originality — and explicitly does not reward expensive equipment — keeps the competition equitable.
• Build in a public viewing window. Even a single week of open viewing, as in 2007/8, transforms the exercise from coursework into communication.

Judging, Equity and the Accessibility Question

The original competition thanked “all those involved in the organisation, promotion and judging,” but did not publish its rubric. Any department reviving the format should be more explicit, because video assessment carries equity risks that written work does not.

• Equipment and skills. Not every student has a camera, editing software or a quiet space to record. Providing loan kit, campus editing suites and short workshops removes the most obvious barrier.
• Consent and privacy. Filming in public places, in schools or with identifiable individuals raises data-protection questions. Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), consent and purpose limitation matter, and students should be briefed before they shoot.
• Accessibility. Public-facing videos should carry captions and, where relevant, audio description. This is both an inclusion measure and, in many institutions, a legal expectation.
• Language. In a pan-European network, entries may arrive in many languages. Subtitling, or requiring English subtitles, keeps judging fair across a multilingual field.

A transparent rubric — shared with students before they start — is the single most effective equity measure. It tells them what “good” looks like and prevents the competition from rewarding the most media-savvy entrant by default.

From Competition to Curriculum: Where Video Fits

The competition format is a competition, but the underlying method scales down into ordinary teaching. Video and multimedia tasks fit naturally into several parts of a geography programme:

• Fieldwork. A short field video documenting a transect, a land-use survey or a river profile turns observation into a shareable artefact and gives students practice in evidence-based narration.
• Place-based learning. Students film and interpret their own neighbourhood, connecting local observation to wider geographical concepts — a staple of the “geography of everyday life” tradition.
• Public geography and outreach. Films can feed open days, school liaison and departmental social media, giving student work a second life beyond the module.
• Research communication. For PhD students and early-career researchers, a two-minute video abstract is increasingly expected by funders and conferences.

The trade-off is time. Video production is slow, and a poorly scaffolded task can consume far more student hours than its credit weighting justifies. The remedy is to treat the film as the culmination of work students are already doing — the fieldwork, the reading, the data — rather than as an additional deliverable bolted on.

The Liverpool Prize and the Value of Network Access

The decision to send winners to the Big Hope Youth Congress in Liverpool is worth dwelling on. Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 gave the city a platform, and the congress gathered young people to discuss global challenges. Placing geography students in that setting did two things at once: it rewarded them, and it positioned geography as a subject with something to say about the world’s problems.

That dual function — reward plus advocacy — is a model other disciplinary networks could copy. A prize that consists of a conference place, a network introduction or a chance to present to a non-specialist audience often has more lasting value than a cash sum, because it builds the professional identity of the recipient. For a network like HERODOT, whose purpose is precisely to connect geographers across borders, sending students to an international event is mission-consistent.

Lessons for Today’s Network Organisers

Anyone planning a similar initiative now should note how much the media landscape has changed since 2007/8. Short-form video is now the default mode of online communication, and students arrive with far more production experience than their predecessors. That raises the bar for what counts as distinctive, but it also lowers the barrier to entry.

A few durable principles survive the change:

• Partner with the student association. EGEA’s involvement gave the competition credibility with students and reach into departments. Student-led promotion is almost always more effective than top-down email.
• Keep the brief open but the criteria tight. Freedom in content, rigour in judging.
• Make the audience real. A viewing week, a screening event or an online showcase turns an assignment into communication.
• Document and share the results. The 2007/8 competition survives in the record largely because the network published its winners and its viewing figures. Future organisers should capture rubrics, entry numbers and feedback so the format can be evaluated and improved.

For those wanting to explore the wider landscape of geography education networks and student associations, the EGEA website and the HERODOT Network’s own pages remain the natural starting points, alongside the broader work of bodies such as the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Geographical Education.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the HERODOT Geography Movie Competition?

It was a short-film competition for geography students run by the HERODOT Network in partnership with EGEA, the European Geography Student Association, during 2007/8. Students submitted videos on geographical themes, which were published and viewed online, with winners invited to the Big Hope Youth Congress in Liverpool in 2008.

Who won the 2007/8 competition?

First place went to Patricia Spiegler of Pécs, Hungary, for Earth, adventure and things like that. The runners-up were Alena Vondráková of Olomouc, Czech Republic, for We love GEOGRAPHY, and Susanne Koolhof and Matthias Demuzere of Groningen, Netherlands, for Journey Through Geography.

Why use video in geography teaching?

Video tasks require students to select, compress and translate geographical ideas for a general audience, which builds communication and argumentation skills alongside subject knowledge. They also produce shareable artefacts useful for fieldwork, outreach and research communication, and they mirror the public-facing communication that funders and employers increasingly value.

What should I watch out for when running a student video competition?

The main risks are inequity of access to equipment and editing skills, data-protection and consent issues when filming people or places, and accessibility for viewers who need captions or audio description. A transparent rubric, loan equipment and clear consent guidance address most of these before entries are submitted.

How long should student geography films be?

For a first attempt, around three minutes is a sensible ceiling: it is long enough to develop an idea and short enough to force clarity and keep judging manageable. Shorter formats of 60–90 seconds work well for social media or recruitment use, while longer films suit documentary-style projects with more support.

Is the competition still running?

The published record documents the 2007/8 edition and invites ideas for a 2008/9 competition, but it does not confirm later rounds. Departments and networks interested in the format today are best advised to treat it as a proven template and adapt it to current platforms, accessibility standards and data-protection rules.