Budakov Films capped its Erasmus+ initiative with a resounding triumph: the third and final “AI Creatives” workshop not only met every project milestone but propelled sixteen student creators to deliver public-ready, ethically vetted training reels in just two days—proof that Budakov’s meticulous planning can turn responsible-AI theory into standout results at production speed.
Last week Budakov Films and XU Exponential University of Applied Sciences brought the Erasmus+ “AI Creatives” project to its practical conclusion with the third – and final – hands-on workshop in the programme’s second activity. Sixteen students, many already collaborating with Budakov Films on freelance or part-time contracts, formed the cohort. About forty-five percent are pursuing design-oriented tracks, thirty percent specialise in digital strategy and growth, and the rest focus on creative-technology entrepreneurship. After two earlier workshops together they had become an agile studio-style team: they spoke the same AI vocabulary, knew one another’s strengths and shared a clear brief—turn ethical-AI guidelines into material that busy creatives can use immediately.
Highlights from the Programme
Because the group had already been selected in earlier rounds, advance preparation replaced recruitment. One week out, each student received a “Reel Builder Kit” in their inbox: a storyboard canvas annotated with checkpoints from the EU AI Act, branded asset files and a concise two-page jury rubric covering relevance, engagement and compliance. A live “Ask-Me-Anything” session on Slack with Budakov Films’ post-production lead followed, sorting out gear questions and subtitling conventions. Remote students were couriered clip-on microphones and green-screen cloths so they could work in lock-step with classmates on site, where ring-lights, lapel mics and mobile gimbals were laid out on the tables.
The moment the doors opened the workshop shifted from theory to production. Students spent the morning aligning their scripts with two core documents—the Creative AI Strategy Handbook and the EU AI Act Compliance Guide—so that every scene embedded a concrete tactic and an explicit compliance checkpoint. Teams then sprinted through collaborative editing and peer reviews, tightening captions and testing accessibility presets. A spirited discussion over voice-over narration versus kinetic-text styling ran ten minutes past schedule, which meant the steering-committee Q&A segment was shorter than planned; feedback the jury could not deliver in the room was pushed to a follow-up thread that evening.
By the second afternoon the cohort had produced eight caption-ready training reels. The steering committee chose the best five—each one illustrating a different creative skill from ideation through distribution—for publication on the project’s YouTube channel with full partner credits. Students also turned in annotated storyboard canvases and properly formatted caption files, all of which now populate the public Toolkit. Post-workshop surveys recorded an average score of 4.9 out of 5 for confidence in “applying AI ethically to real video projects,” comfortably above the project’s 4.5 target and strong evidence that written guidance has been converted into practice-ready assets.
Meticulous logistics smoothed the path. Caption-preset files covered the major editing suites, a shared cloud repository prevented version chaos, and dedicated Slack hotlines connected students to legal and accessibility advisers in real time. With headaches removed, creative energy stayed focused on quality and compliance.
Workshop 3 therefore met the Erasmus+ objectives on two fronts. First, it demonstrated that the Handbook’s recommendations and the Compliance Guide’s safeguards can live inside real production workflows without slowing them down. Second, it generated open-access teaching materials that any European creative can adopt and adapt. The reels now enter final colour grade and will be released under a CC-BY licence; the complete Toolkit is already live on Budakov Films’ resources page.
The classroom lights may be off, but the work travels on. Students left not just with certificates but with public-facing proof that responsible AI and high-impact creativity can—and should—coexist.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Agência Nacional Erasmus+ Educação e Formação. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Project No: 2024-2-PT01-KA210-VET-000290218