The 1989 Generation Initiative aims to reinvigorate the European integration process by putting the youth in the driver’s seat of European decision-making and fostering dialogue between generations.
We intend to foster an emerging European Identity through a new project, entitled The Babble, which will be the first truly European satirical online magazine, bringing all Europeans together through laughter.

The EU Bubble is isolating itself from the rest of Europe and preventing a European identity from properly manifesting within the European population. There is an apparent lack of common cultural products in Europe. We have been under the influence of US sitcoms that take place in cafes or pubs in New York for too long. The Babble addresses the Tower of Babel that is the European community by making us all speak the same language: laughter.

The idea behind The Babble is to bring Europeans together through laughter and to emphasise our shared cultural bonds and European identity. Ideally, the project would succeed in bringing Europeans closer together and Brussels closer to Europe.
A year from now, The Babble will not only be an established online medium, but also a professional organisation with a permanent staff of writers, editors and translators, who supply regular doses of amusement to the European public.

We started with an idea and quickly developed an action plan. Utilising the resources of the 1989 Generation Initiative, we launched a professional PR campaign to advertise for The Babble. We are also receiving support from the Creative Writing Department at the University of Glasgow, and we have hired a professional brand designer to make our site unique and visually appealing. We are currently accepting submissions and intend to launch the project in the early summer. Furthermore, we are working out partnerships with established satirical websites (such as Der Postillon) across Europe. After our initial launch, we aim to professionalise the medium further by incorporating it in Paris and hiring a diverse permanent staff to keep the Babble running.

-

We’re doing it for the kids! This project is aimed at all Europeans of all age groups, though we are aware it will likely be most popular amongst the YouTube generation which prefers watching The Daily Show to following regular news media. The Babble doesn’t aim to replace the news, so much as it aims to ridicule it and thus dig deeper into the issues behind the headlines to inspire shared European discourse.

The two main reasons why pan-European media has never been established are lack of interest on the side of journalists and fear of linguistic obstacles. The Babble aims both to show the funny and interesting side of EU politics and domestic issues, and to present all of this in intelligent translations. We can therefore accept submissions from anywhere in Europe in any language and make them available, funny and interesting to everyone else on the continent.

Rough estimates: Travel costs: 1000€ PR Campaign: 1000€ Branding/Design Costs: 5000€ Permanent Staff costs: 30.000 - 50.000€ Contract work costs: 20.000€

Are there any particular formats of satire or content you would like to see yourselves? What would most interest you in a pan-European satirical platform such as this?