How ITVS meets audience where they really are (IndieWire)

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Independent Lens Creator Lab

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Independent Lens Creator Lab

Accepting applications through December 19, 2025

Co-production support for independent storytellers on social media.

Bring your ideas to life with the team behind Independent Lens on PBS, ready to make content that matters and shape what storytelling looks like next. The Independent Lens Creator Lab is a six-month program to develop bold new storytelling approaches—from serialized shorts to narrated experiences—that reimagine what public media can be.

  • Six-month program for six standout creators

  • Vertical social “micro-series” and hybrid visual forms

  • Up to $36k in production funding, mentorship, and industry support

Three people on a rooftop at sunset looking out over the New York skyline. Camera looking at man

We’re so much more than funders.

With ITVS, documentary filmmakers get a dedicated partner. We’re here to support their vision, every step of the way.

  • Advancing the stories you care about

  • Supporting creative freedom

  • Securing public media distribution

  • Connecting filmmakers to a wider audience

Stories that move us

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Get started with ITVS

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ITVS in the community

Through PBS stations, libraries, and local groups, ITVS documentaries spark dialogue, civic action, and lasting connection.

Indie Lens Pop-up

A conversation with Dolores Huerta after an advance screening of "Dolores" at WKAR's studio in East Lansing, Michigan.

Amanda Pinckney/WKAR-MSU

A roomful of viewers raise their hands to participate in PBS SoCal’s advanced screening of “A Path Appears” in Los Angeles.

Desiree Gutierrez/PBS SoCal

Three statewide library leaders participate in a post-film “Free for All: The Public Library” discussion moderated by the Central Arkansas Library System Foundation’s board president at Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock, AR.

Eliza Borné/Central Arkansas Library System Foundation

Oasis Bike Workshop’s graduating class of middle schoolers rode out and back to watch “Bike Vessel” with Nashville PBS.

Sarah Childress/Nashville PBS

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