Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) is an independent non-profit art initiative founded in Egypt in 2004. CIC’s mission spans contemporary art and media educational programming that responds to and develops visual culture and artistic practice, engagement, and discourse. Since its founding by a group of artists and photographers who today make up its Board of Trustees, CIC has a special interest in the many urgent roles of the photographic image within society and media. Through CIC PhotoSchool we provide courses, workshops, and technical and professional facilities, aimed at local and regional capacity to develop a broad and critically effective visual media landscape. Contemporary art programming at CIC aims to produce critical contexts for a range of practices via exhibitions, residencies, special projects, discursive events, publications and educational activities. Working beyond the curatorial logic of the ‘platform’ or ‘showcase’; a primary question for CIC as a whole is rooted in the creation of milieux in which ideas, practices and discussions related to the broadest remit of visual culture can be fostered. We consider artistic and curatorial practices we work with to be operating within and addressing simultaneously both local and international contexts and debates. Across the PhotoSchool and broader contemporary art programming, CIC’s mission evolves from an interest in the multifarious modes of image production and consumption, contemporary and historical, arising from within and without art practices, and the ways in which they reflect and respond to the present.