Polar Lab
Research, storytelling, public interpretation, experimentation, collaboration, and creative inquiry across disciplines.
A Guiding Framework for Arctic Futures, Research, Creativity, and Emerging Leadership
Overview
Polar Lab is an evolving interdisciplinary platform within the Anchorage Museum dedicated to exploring the cultural, ecological, scientific, technological, and imaginative questions shaping the future of Alaska and the Arctic.
Grounded in place while connected internationally, Polar Lab brings together artists, researchers, scientists, designers, technologists, culture bearers, and emerging leaders to examine how northern communities are adapting, imagining, and creating futures in a rapidly changing world.
Through research, storytelling, public interpretation, experimentation, collaboration, and creative inquiry, Polar Lab creates space for dialogue across disciplines and perspectives.
The initiative recognizes that the future North will require new forms of connection between science, culture, design, Indigenous knowledge, ecology, technology, archives, public engagement, and imagination.
Polar Lab is intentionally flexible, allowing projects, collaborations, fellowships, residencies, and emerging ideas to evolve organically over time.
The Museum serves as a place where complex ideas about the North can be explored publicly, creatively, and collaboratively.
What Polar Lab Supports
Polar Lab supports a wide range of interdisciplinary work connected to Arctic futures, public dialogue, and creative experimentation.
Areas of focus include:
- Research and public interpretation
- Interdisciplinary collaboration
- Fellowships, residencies, and visiting artists
- Youth leadership and emerging voices
- Experimental publishing and Field Notes
- Archives and collections-based inquiry
- Ecological and climate storytelling
- Multimedia storytelling and film
- Speculative futures work
- Workshops and public conversations
- Arctic and circumpolar exchange
Why Polar Lab
Polar Lab seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue around Arctic futures while creating meaningful connections between science, culture, design, ecology, storytelling, and public life.
The initiative supports emerging voices and future generations of Arctic thinkers and leaders, helping translate complex ideas into accessible public-facing formats and building long-term institutional memory around museum initiatives.
Polar Lab also encourages imaginative and speculative thinking about northern futures through experimentation, collaboration, and creative inquiry. By connecting local, Indigenous, national, and international participants, the initiative contributes to broader public understanding of environmental, cultural, and technological change across Arctic regions.
Program Areas
The Emerging Arctic Leaders Initiative is a flexible and evolving framework for engaging young people in the civic, cultural, ecological, scientific, and imaginative questions shaping the future North.
Grounded in Alaska and centered on ensuring young Alaskans have a voice in shaping Arctic futures, the initiative also creates opportunities for dialogue and exchange with visiting students, fellows, researchers, artists, and emerging leaders from outside the state whose work connects to Northern environments, local knowledge, climate, design, culture, science, and public life.
Rather than functioning as a formal board or heavily structured cohort program, the initiative is intended to remain flexible and project-based, allowing different participants to contribute over time through museum projects, their own interests and areas of study, visiting collaborations, research initiatives, and public programs.
Participants may contribute through:
- conversations and future-focused discussions
- meetings with visiting artists, scientists, architects, designers, researchers, and culture bearers
- occasional feedback and idea sessions
- interdisciplinary research and interpretation
- storytelling and public-facing writing
- experimental publishing and creative responses
- ecological and cultural inquiry
- speculative and future-oriented thinking
- summaries and reflections connected to museum conversations and projects
- attending meetings or discussions (at the museum and/or in communities) and offering perspectives from an emerging leaders viewpoint
The initiative is intended as a generational and interdisciplinary platform for curiosity, participation, interpretation, and imagination connected to the future of Alaska and the Arctic.
Polar Lab Fellows are visiting or affiliated researchers, writers, scientists, architects, designers, technologists, policy thinkers, environmental humanities scholars, culture bearers, and interdisciplinary practitioners whose work connects to Arctic futures and Northern environments.
Fellows may engage with the museum through:
- research collaborations
- workshops and public programs
- interdisciplinary conversations
- essays and publications
- climate and ecological inquiry
- speculative scenario development
- design and systems thinking
- field-based or archival research
- mentorship and dialogue with emerging leaders
- collaborative projects with museum staff and partners
The fellowship structure is intentionally flexible and may include short-term visits, project-based collaborations, virtual participation, or longer-term research engagement.
Polar Lab Collective invites emerging artists to study in the Anchorage Museum’s collections and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center’s Living Our Cultures exhibition. The program provides space and support for artists to find inspiration, insight, and technical knowledge through close-up engagement with materials, craftsmanship, and cultural belongings.
Participants may engage through:
- collections study and visual research
- conversations with artists, curators, and culture bearers
- material exploration and observational drawing
- interdisciplinary inquiry connecting art, ecology, design, history, and Indigenous knowledge
- creative experimentation and studio-based research
- reflective writing and Field Notes contributions
- research connected to craftsmanship, making, and material traditions
- projects inspired by Arctic and circumpolar cultures, landscapes, and futures
The Collective is intended to foster curiosity, creative growth, and deeper relationships between artists, collections, archives, and cultural knowledge while creating opportunities for emerging artists to engage directly with the museum as a site of learning, reflection, and imagination.
Polar Lab Artists in Residence are artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, and creative practitioners exploring themes connected to Arctic futures, ecology, climate, infrastructure, memory, migration, technology, Indigenous futurisms, speculative design, archives, and northern landscapes.
Residencies may support:
- field research
- visual and multimedia storytelling
- film and documentary work
- speculative projects
- sound and performance
- ecological and material experimentation
- public conversations and workshops
- collaborative projects with scientists, researchers, and communities
- publications and creative responses
- exhibitions and installations
The residency structure may evolve over time and include local, national, and international participants.
Field Notes
A central component of Polar Lab is the creation of “Field Notes” — publications, essays, interviews, creative works, and interpretive materials that help the museum synthesize, interpret, document, organize, and translate interdisciplinary ideas for broad audiences.
Field Notes are intended to create an evolving public-facing archive of knowledge, creativity, research, imagination, and public dialogue connected to Alaska and the Arctic.
Depending on the participant, project, or area of inquiry, Field Notes may include reflective writing, short and speculative essays, ecological storytelling, fiction, interviews, glossaries, annotated bibliographies, summaries of conversations, interdisciplinary interpretation, podcasts, audio storytelling, zines, digital artwork, photography, visual research, archival compilations, educational guides, short films, documentary experiments, multimedia storytelling, exhibitions, workshops, and public engagement activities.
Collectively, these contributions help the museum synthesize, interpret, document, organize, and translate interdisciplinary ideas for broad audiences while building an evolving archive of Arctic knowledge, creativity, research, imagination, and public dialogue.
Possible Areas of Inquiry
Projects connected to Polar Lab may include:
- Arctic Futures
- Polar Library
- Indigenous futurisms
- ecology and climate adaptation
- environmental storytelling
- biomaterials and living systems
- speculative design
- youth publishing
- podcasts and public interpretation
- collections and archives
- science communication
- northern infrastructure and changing landscapes
- migration and displacement
- climate futures
- architecture and resilience
- Arctic urbanism
- environmental humanities
- community memory and oral histories
- Arctic visual culture
- overlooked species and ecological systems
- materials of the North
- future food systems
- water systems and hydrology
- remote technologies and decentralized systems
- changing coastlines and landscapes
- cultural resilience and adaptation
- northern transportation and infrastructure
- relationships between humans and the natural world
