NVTV, also known as Northern Visions Television, is a local community television station based in the city of Belfast. It is operated by the Northern Visions media and arts project, and although some staff are employed by the station, most involved are volunteers. NVTV is now the only local community station in Northern Ireland.
History
The station was launched on 9 February 2004, with the first programme aired being a film called The School Trip, which was made by students at the Fleming Fulton School in the city. Initially NVTV broadcast just one hour of programming on weekdays which was repeated on loop, with shows repeated again at the weekend; however, the station expanded its content and covers community and other events in and around the Belfast metropolitan area, as well as other commissioned programmes. Alongside several ongoing 'community' programmes, the mainstay of regular, weekly shows included The Artery, created and filmed by an independent director, Royce Harper from the station's inception to late 2007. This was a 45-minute arts, culture and music magazine style show that won a sizeable production award in 2006 from The Northern Ireland Film & Television Commission (now NI Screen). Over 100 episodes were produced and aired on NVTV. The Artery was then further screened by Dublin Community Television, DCTV in ROI. The analogue signal was broadcast on UHF channel 62 (799.276 MHz), although coverage in Belfast was poor, as it was out of group on many receiving aerials.
NVTV was originally granted a four-year Restricted Service Licence by the Independent Television Commission, and is operated by the long established, non-profit Northern Visions media and arts centre in the Cathedral Quarter of the city. The station's facilities are used by 200 community-based organisations, as well as a range of individual actors and filmmakers.
NVTV's analogue transmissions ceased in October 2012 during the digital switchover, however it continued to stream its programming online. On 10 October 2012, the channel was granted a 12-year local TV licence to broadcast on digital terrestrial television by Ofcom. The channel was relaunched on 29 September 2014 through the Freeview and Virgin Media platforms. It is currently licensed to transmit on UHF Channel 30 (Freeview LCN 7) the stations signal/coverage has Improved significantly since the digital switchover.
Northern Visions
Northern Visions was established in 1986 as a Channel 4 franchised workshop under the ACTT Workshop Agreement, with a strong emphasis on inclusion and the value of bringing communities together to meet a common goal. It was the first local "production company" in Northern Ireland to be awarded a Channel Four commission, one of a number of documentaries in the years that followed that went on to be broadcast by other European broadcasters, ZDF, RAI and ARTE and to win awards. Documentaries were also broadcast in Australia and America.
The organisation was an integral part of the Film & Video Workshop Movement, which comprised groups with united passions for film, politics and a polemical critique of metropolitan, industrial hegemony and unbalanced forms of media representation. It worked as a collective providing facilities to other people for training or educational purposes, outside the realms of their creative production work.
The ACTT Workshop Declaration was a ground-breaking agreement promulgated by the ACTT (now BECTU) in 1982, in consultation with the English Regional Arts Associations, the Welsh Arts Council, Channel Four and the BFI, recognising the alternative practices of the 'workshops' and constituting them to encourage a cultural, social and political contribution to society. The declaration was a radical step for a traditionally closed-shop union, and established working practices in the non-profit, cultural sector. Groups of four or more full-time members whose funding derived from public sources and who engaged in non-commercial work on a not-for-profit basis were enfranchised by the ACTT and given a condition to grant aid for a period of 1, 2 or 3 years, freeing them from 'the tyranny of continually searching for insecure short time funding from arts organisations. Of immediate significance was that the ACTT placed the cultural and political ideologies of its new membership before wage concerns in allowing the groups to operate on an egalitarian minimum wage structure. The recognition of cross-grade practice also allowed filmworkers to gain experience in a range of roles and stipulated that the group and not the commissioner would own sole copyright to the work.