NPLD – Coppieters Campus 2025 report “Audiovisual Production on Regional and Minority Languages”.

Can a language survive in the twenty-first century without integrating into audiovisual content ecosystems?

The process of globalisation that took shape in the second half of the twentieth century has transformed the planet into a single economic and communicative space. At the same time, technological innovations, particularly digitalisation and the rapid expansion of the internet, have enabled the immediate and global exchange and circulation of audiovisual content. As a result, patterns of consumption have changed substantially. During the twentieth century, cinema dominated as a shared social experience in theatres while today, it has turned into individual viewing across a wide range of personal devices. This transformation has had a structural impact on our societies.

Despite the apparent diversity offered by the digital environment, a small number of major platforms now control audiovisual content distribution on a global scale. This poses particular challenges for speakers of regional and minority languages. Communities whose languages have been historically and politically marginalized have often been compelled to use dominant, officially supported languages in their daily lives. Those are the languages that tend to prevail in audiovisual production.As a consequence , regional and minority  languages, historically excluded from key areas such as culture, education or public services, they now face the risk of disappearing from screens altogether.

In this report, Dr. Jordy Sebastià brings together insights from discussions held during the  Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) – Coppieters Campus, which took place on 6 and 7 November 2025, in Leeuwarden, Frislan. Organized in collaboration with the Noordelijk Film Festival and the Government of the Province of Fryslân, the campus focused on “Audiovisual Production in Regional and Minority Languages”.

The objective of the campus was not only to assess the situation in different parts of Europe, but also to present inspiring examples and propose solutions to a reality that limits millions of people’s access to audiovisual content in their own language.

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This paper is a joint initiative of  NPLD & Coppieters Foundation.

NPLD-Coppieters Campus is organized in collaboration with the Noordelijk Film Festival and the Government of the Province of Fryslân,

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Background photo by Ali Shah Lakhani

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This paper is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for its content or the opinions of the authors.

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