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Co:Laboratory!

Greetings from the future and welcome to Northwest Film Center… without walls. That's right, you've found the NWFC's Co:Laboratory!

Expansive in genre, mediums, and ideas, the NWFC's Co:Laboratory is one grand experiment. Continuously offering online and IRL connection to people, ideas, and innovations in the media arts that help artists and art lovers sustain their curiosity and what is creatively possible, the Co:Laboratory exists to uniquely inspire new projects, new skills, and new ways of seeing. In the spirit of all creative endeavors, it will be designed to be an ever-evolving, community-driven, ongoing work-in-progress.

From the beginning, the expansive talks, workshops, and offerings will require from its participant's imagination, innovation, and open-mindedness — and above all, a willingness to try new things a bit differently. Ranging from open and free classes to programming directed at professionals at all levels hoping to expand their personal projects and possibilities, many of the programs will be team-taught or presented, allowing for a multiplicity of points of view on any one topic.

NWFC will be learning and listening for the next six months, working with our Advisory Board and both our local and global community to help shape a future where for whom, by whom, and how cinematic stories are told is more open and inclusive. Together, we will test, experiment, study, and practice. We will question things. We will take risks and create what's next.

So whether you're a lover of a good story well told, a working media artist in the NW (or beyond!), or are working to change the status quo, we can't wait to have you with us.

Visit our upcoming classes, workshops, and events!

Upcoming Classes & Workshops

General Rules of Thumb for Fundraising: How to Package, Pitch, and Fund Creative Projects

Dec 10, 2021

Learn the basics of what funders are looking for from artists when they are being asked to fund creative projects. …

View the Calendar to find current classes.

The Northwest Film Center recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence.