[2] Vtape was established in 1980 by artists Lisa Steele, Susan Britton, Rodney Werden, Clive Robertson, Colin Campbell and Kim Tomczak[4] with the mission to improve the distribution and dissemination of video art and to compensate artists fairly for their work.
[5][6] Vtape provided organizational assistance for independent art exhibitions throughout the 1980s and 1990s during conditions of intensive censorship of artists' film and video works by the Government of Ontario.
[7] Vtape began a dedicated collection of video works by Indigenous artists in 1994,[5] after being approached by Zachary Longboy.
Longboy helped develop the collection as Vtape's Aboriginal outreach coordinator, and was succeeded by Cynthia Lickers-Sage.
As outreach coordinator, Lickers-Sage broadened the collection's reach through the establishment of the imagineNative Film Festival in 1998.