Northern Visions is a community media group in the city of Belfast, and the organisation who used to run the NVTV television station in that city.

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.

In the late 1990s, the organisation decided to move away from programming for national broadcasters to develop local community distribution platforms and opportunities for communities at disadvantage in Northern Ireland. In 2002, they were one of fifteen groups selected by the Radio Authority to take part in the Access Radio pilot scheme, running during 2002/2003. The aim of the project was to inform the future regulator – Ofcom (Office of Communications) – whether Access Radio, a new tier of not-for-profit radio, was a viable concept and, if it was to be introduced in the future, how it might be licensed, regulated, funded, promoted and organised. In March 2003, a full evaluation of the project New Voices by Anthony Everitt, an independent evaluator, was published. In September 2003, Ofcom announced that it had decided to extend the period of the pilot scheme for, what it now refers to as, 'Community Radio', for a further year, until 31 December 2004. This pilot led to a new tier of community broadcasting in the UK, when community radio stations were recognised as a distinct third tier of radio, alongside BBC Radio and commercial radio, in the Communications Act 2003.

Following a loophole in legislation, Northern Visions joined with the Institute of Local Television, to lobby for local public service television on Freeview in the UK in 2003. They were joined by a number of advocates including the Community Media Association in Sheffield and Oxford local television (now That's Oxford), Somerset Film & Video and Channel 7 (now Estuary TV). In 2011, the Conservative-led government published its Framework for Local TV. This created the opportunity for local TV licences to be awarded through a competitive selection process run by Ofcom to broadcast targeted and relevant local content including news, current affairs and entertainment programmes.

Northern Visions moved into its present building in 2004 in the Cathedral Quarter in Belfast, and established an arts and digital media centre, principally to work with groups involved in the arts, culture and local heritage, media literacy and education, community development, urban regeneration and community relations. The vision is of a democratised form of media where new technologies are utilised as a tool for expression and creativity, to effect social change and combat poverty, social exclusion and isolation.

The organisation has a strong community arts ethos. It has championed access and participation in the arts and has formulated new ways of making films and digital content with local communities throughout its history as an organisation. Its film Our Words Jump to Life, broadcast in 1988, was the first time an Irish film made through community arts practice was broadcast on national television. This was notable as the closed shop dominated the film and television industry at that time. The film went on to win several awards, including the Celtic Film Festival, toured Australia and was picked up for broadcast by European television stations.