Northern Visions: The Full Picture
One Belfast media hub. Five funding relationships. A wall-to-wall slate of stories.
23 Donegall Street, Belfast — where community television, archive, training and artistic ambition all live under one roof.
FUTURE SCREENS NI: Northern Visions Television: R&D Proof of Concept
April–October 2025 | Cross-sector AI research
Northern Visions isn’t just making programmes — it’s helping build the tools the next generation of storytellers will use. Under this Future Screens NI deed (funded via the Department for Communities), Northern Visions Television is teaming up with AI scientists at Queen’s University and Ulster University to explore artificial intelligence as both a creative storytelling tool and a production tool.
This is genuine frontier work for a community broadcaster: a small Belfast production company sitting at the same table as two universities’ AI research groups, prototyping how machine intelligence might reshape editing, narrative development and production workflow — while keeping every ounce of foreground IP firmly in Northern Visions’ own hands.
The stakes: proof-of-concept funding that could unlock a genuinely new production methodology for community media across Ireland.
ILBF TRAINEE FUNDING AGREEMENT: Growing Belfast’s Next Irish-Language Producer
13 October 2025 – 13 October 2026 | Northern Ireland Screen / Irish Language Broadcast Fund
Meet Eamonn Higgins: Northern Visions’ Trainee Assistant Producer, and the whole reason this scheme exists. Over twelve intensive months, Northern Visions throws open every door: hands-on mentoring from senior production staff, technical training in camera, sound and non-linear editing, and — the big prize — the chance to pitch his own development or production proposal directly to the ILBF.
The mission is audacious in its simplicity: take one trainee and, by the end of the year, have him standing behind a broadcast-standard Irish-language television programme that he helped produce. Regular mentoring sessions, quarterly performance reporting, and full access to Northern Visions’ industry contacts turn a job title into a genuine launchpad into the production sector.
The payoff: a new Irish-language production talent, forged inside a working newsroom, not a classroom.
SHARED SCREENS, SHARED ISLAND — Northern Visions Goes Cross-Border
Part of a four-nation Creative Ireland application | 2026–2028
This is Northern Visions stepping onto the biggest stage yet: one of six community media partners — alongside Cork Community Media Hub, Cork Community Television, Dublin Community Television and North Leitrim Community Video — in an all-island participatory filmmaking network spanning Cork, Dublin, Leitrim and Belfast.
Northern Visions’ Belfast cohort will be drawn from older adults, migrant and new communities, disability groups and young people — three community groups producing work shoulder-to-shoulder with counterparts across the island. The Belfast leg of the project feeds into:
- A co-designed editorial framework built collaboratively across all four cities
- A skills exchange programme in camera, sound, interviewing and mobile journalism
- Belfast’s own slice of 12 cross-border co-productions and a share of three ‘Shared Screens’ broadcast specials — one of them anchored right here on NVTV
- A permanent, reusable Shared Island community media toolkit and digital archive
Northern Visions brings serious cross-border pedigree to the table too — a founding member of the Community Television Association since 2008, and a veteran of “Stories of a Shared Island”, the identity-and-archive project that helped scope this very initiative.
The vision: Belfast voices, sitting alongside Cork, Dublin and Leitrim voices, telling one shared island’s stories — broadcast to audiences across the entire country.
ACNI ARTISTIC PROGRAMME 2026–2027
A Year of Everything, All at Once
This is the beating heart of Northern Visions’ identity: a genuinely enormous slate of participatory arts projects run out of the ArcHive — a fully accessible ground-floor studio and exhibition space with 25 digital workstations, training rooms and decades of archive. Here’s the full sweep:
Dream Big Ten digital media workshops for 13–16 year-olds in socially deprived Belfast, building straight on a run of results so strong that participating pupils landed A-grade media exam results. 30+ participants, reaching 55,860+ audiences.
Little Sparks Future Dreams Demand has increased fivefold. Five and six-year-olds co-create stories brought to life through digital media, puppetry and animation — screened for their own schools. 125+ participants, 1,500 live audience, year four and counting.
Art Happens Here: Table for Four on Tour Now officially partnered with Libraries NI. Live, in-front-of-an-audience creative workshops using recycled materials, tackling climate change and sustainability head-on. 18 participants, 250 live audience.
“Hushhhhh…The Silence of Sewing” Season two, now inside the National Museum NI Folk Park at Cultra, with access to unseen archival pieces. Participants create traditional Mountmellick Embroidery — a slow, meditative act of creativity, mental health support and storytelling rolled into one. 58 participants, 400+ exhibition visitors.
Creative Roots Partnered with Orchardville: six workshops for young adults with learning difficulties and neurodiversity, building confidence and a voice in the conversation about a sustainable future.
Life of Change A genuinely striking reframe: instead of the usual difficulty-focused narrative around women’s life transitions (puberty, pregnancy, perimenopause, menopause), this project centres positive transformation — resilience, renewed direction, emotional strength — including a dedicated Menopause & Disability strand. Final piece exhibited at the City Hospital’s Tower Gallery. 1,000+ exhibition audience.
Artist Showcase An archive of 150+ artists, run in partnership with the Royal Ulster Academy and Ulster Museum, giving every artist free promotional materials for their own use.
On The Box A launchpad for emerging singer-songwriters, breaking down the economic barriers between talent and a public platform.
Plus: the ongoing Arts & Older People Programme (8 projects, 50 participants — including Our Parlour Out & About, taking creative sessions into community gardens and allotments), and Voluntary Arts — spanning poetry (“Novel Ideas”), independent film (“Banterflix”) and sports journalism (“Football Express”) across 16 projects and 80 participants.
The reach behind all of it: Freeview, Virgin Media across NI and the Republic, Sky 181, and a digital footprint topping 4.4 million VOD views and 878,000+ website visits.
ULSTER-SCOTS BROADCAST FUND — Year 10 Production Proposal 2026–2027
A decade of partnership with the Ulster-Scots Agency, entering its most ambitious year yet.
A decade of partnership with the Ulster-Scots Agency, entering its most ambitious year yet.
With the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence landing squarely in the middle of the year, Northern Visions has built a slate that turns Ulster-Scots heritage into genuinely gripping television:
What Revolting People! – The Ulster-Scots and the American Revolution Presented by historian David Hume, this documentary traces an “anti-authoritarian streak” from the Scottish Lowlands, through Ulster, to its “finest hour” in the American Revolution — combining already-filmed U.S. contributor interviews with new Northern Ireland location filming, building to a ‘reveal’ that draws a direct line from Belfast’s own streets to the Declaration itself.
Amazing Ulster Americans A nine-part, fifteen-minutes-each series hunting down the missing chapter behind famous American names: David Hume tracks down Amelia Earhart’s transatlantic landing field at Culmore, traces John Steinbeck’s ancestral graves in Ballykelly, and resurrects forgotten physician-author Dr. James McHenry in Larne. Candidate list also includes Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rosa Parks and Sam Houston.
Aul’ Sangs Frae the Kist This one is a genuine showstopper. Presenter Frank Ferguson opens a museum archive drawer to challenge the claim that Ulster-Scots “has no songs” — and proves it wrong, using the Sam Henry Collection. The centrepiece: musicians reconstruct one historical song exactly as it might have sounded, then flip it into a brand-new contemporary version — letting the audience hear 200 years of tradition, side by side, in real time.
Mingy Aul’ Scrooge! A ten-minute Ulster-Scots language short film (December 2026 airdate), written by poet Eileen McCohan, dropping Dickens’ Scrooge into Ulster-Scots wit, superstition and dark winter dread — filmed at Mervelle House, Newtownabbey, and built for punchy, shareable social cut-downs.
Training pipeline: New Ulster-Scots trainee Eva Jackson joins in August 2026, building on her earlier work on Eva’s First Twelfth, continuing a New Entrant Scheme running since 2008.
Reach: 305,000 Freeview households, 157,000 Virgin Media subscribers in NI, plus 1.4 million+ households across the Republic via Virgin 802/803 — with the Ulster-Scots-dedicated site alone logging 67,538 views.
THE BIG PICTURE
Across five funding relationships, Northern Visions is simultaneously:
- Prototyping the future of production with two universities and AI researchers
- Training the next generation of Irish-language and Ulster-Scots producers
- Building bridges across the border with Cork, Dublin and Leitrim
- Running a full artistic season touching every age group from five-year-olds to nonagenarians
- Producing a landmark Ulster-Scots slate timed to a 250-year American anniversary
One small building on Donegall Street. An enormous, joined-up programme of work.
Arts projects at Northern Visions are generously supported by:
