In an industry with innumerable barriers to entry, VC is working to democratize and diversify the field, to ensure that all nonfiction video professionals have the community, connections, and resources they need to collaboratively produce and release compelling, impactful stories. We see filmmaking as a process, not as a club, and our operations reflect this ethos.

By and for filmmakers, VC programs — global and local, in-person and virtual — empower storytellers with jobs, mentorship, strategic connections, and industry resources. Concurrently, led by talented journalists and filmmakers based around the world, we organize in-person gatherings, screenings, and workshops in more than a dozen cities in the United States, Europe, South America, and Africa.

To represent the evolving direction of our field, we use “nonfiction video” as an umbrella term to describe the interconnected sectors of documentary filmmaking, visual journalism, and social [fact-based] media (and everything in between and beyond) — all forms that serve the urgent need for truth in this new age of misinformation.

Today, as the premier nonfiction video network, VC supports and connects all professionals working at this creative intersection — those pushing boundaries behind the camera to make an outsize impact in front of it.

The idea for the Video Consortium came during a time of monumental industry change, from visual journalist Sky Dylan-Robbins. Sitting at her desk at The New Yorker magazine in 2015, she craved community in the siloed journalism industry and collaboration within the then-burgeoning digital video scene. Imagining how empowering it would be to connect with the industry’s growing number of video journalists, Sky emailed new hires at Vox, The New York Times, TIME, and a handful of indie documentary filmmakers. A week later, on a wintry evening at the back of an East Village bar in New York City, this small group of camera-wielding creatives sat together, clinking glasses, trading video secrets, and inspiring each other with their hopes for the industry’s future.

After a dozen local chapters launched, hundreds of industry gatherings produced, thousands of strategic connections (and friendships) forged, innumerable jobs filled and films made, and with the integral help of journalists and filmmakers around the world, VC incorporated as a nonprofit in 2016 and began its transformation into the global media organization it is today.