2026 marks the 10th anniversary of Artica Svalbard.

Founded in November 2016, Artica Svalbard was established with a clear vision: to use art and culture to raise awareness of the Arctic’s unique challenges, share knowledge, and inspire change.

Over the past decade, Artica has supported artists, writers, and researchers from around the world, creating space for reflection, dialogue, and long-term engagement with the Arctic.

The second lecture in the Lantern Lectures series is now available to watch.

In this talk, Anatolijs Venovcevs, researcher in historical archaeology at Svalbard Museum, explores the uncomfortable but increasingly unavoidable question of loss in heritage management. While societies have long-developed rituals for letting go of people and objects, heritage has often been treated as something that must endure indefinitely.

Artica Svalbard is pleased to announce that a new instalment of Field Notes, written by former residents Bianca Hisse and Christian Danielewitz, is now available to read.

Nominated for their residency by Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Hisse and Danielewitz spent Autumn 2025 in Longyearbyen undertaking a shared research project exploring the intertwined infrastructures of extraction, science, and geopolitics that shape the contemporary Arctic.

Artica Svalbard is pleased to announce the publication of the first essay in this year’s edition of Artica Writings 2025: Beneath the Surface – Deep-Sea Mining and the Arctic. The essay, titled Unruly Bodies of Water, is now live on our website.

In this timely and incisive piece, writer and researcher Hanna Mortensdatter Vandeskog examines the political, legal, and ecological tensions surrounding Norway’s decision to open parts of its continental shelf to deep-sea mining.

Artica Svalbard is featured as a key case study in Greening Artistic Residencies: Cultural Mobility Funding Guide 2025, a new publication from On the Move exploring how European residencies are adapting their practices in response to ecological and climate challenges.

Artica appears in Part 3: Case Studies. The guide highlights how Artica’s programme — shaped by its Arctic context and developed under the direction of Charlotte Hetherington — integrates sustainability into both operational decisions and artistic support. 

In February and March 2026, artists Mhairi Killin and Floortje Zonneveld will be in residence at Artica Svalbard, developing From the Mouths of the Caves, Listening to Hear Another Island’s Song - a collaborative project exploring how knowledge travels across island environments through art, sound, language, and community.

The first lecture in the Lantern Lectures series is now available to watch.

In this talk, Ine-Therese Pedersen, state meteorologist and Longyearbyen resident, reflects on how climate change is reshaping everyday life in Svalbard. Blending professional insight with personal observation, she offers a local perspective on how rising temperatures, shifting seasons, and changing weather patterns are felt in daily routines and in the landscape itself.

Artica Svalbard welcomed a full group of participants on Saturday 15 November for Printmaking with Natural Colour, a three-hour workshop led by Scottish artist, producer, and educator Emma Henderson. Across the morning, the studio was filled with the colours, textures, and subtle alchemy of natural materials as Emma introduced participants to the fundamentals of creating pigments and inks from plants and other organic sources.

Artica Svalbard is a founding organisation of NAARCA – the Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action – and we are pleased to announce that applications for the 2026 NAARCA residencies are now open.

In 2026, NAARCA will support two funded residency exchanges taking place between March and November. Selected artists will receive a fee, a materials and equipment allowance, and a travel stipend.

During her October residency, childhood studies researcher Ragnhild Bjørnsen continued her ongoing work on how Longyearbyen’s unusually high turnover affects young people’s friendships, social relationships, and sense of belonging. Her research, grounded in psychological anthropology, focuses on children and youth living in highly mobile environments.

This month, Artica Svalbard is pleased to host Emma Henderson, an artist, producer, and arts educator based in the west of Scotland, as part of the Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action (NAARCA) staff exchange programme. She joins us from Cove Park, a NAARCA partner residency located on Scotland’s west coast.

This dark season, Artica Svalbard is proud to announce the return of our Lantern Lectures series — and this year, we’re delighted to partner with Svalbard Museum to co-host the programme. Together, we’re reviving an old Arctic tradition of storytelling and community reflection, inspired by the 19th-century magic lantern lectures, which once brought people together to share knowledge through projected images, spoken word, and discussion.

This month, Artica Svalbard was pleased to host a series of fully booked creative writing workshops with French author and Artica resident Clara Arnaud. Across three evenings in Longyearbyen, participants gathered to explore new ways of storytelling rooted in the Arctic landscape, local history, and the boundaries between the human and more-than-human world.

We’re delighted to welcome American photographer and artist David Samuel Stern to Longyearbyen as our latest resident at Artica Svalbard. Stern is known for his deeply considered, craft-based approach to photography — a practice that explores the medium’s materiality and its relationship to portraiture, time, and place.