MCAD Students Head to 2024 Arctic Congress
Celebrate the remarkable achievements of the project teams heading to the 2024 Arctic Congress, including the dedicated students and faculty from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
MCAD Students Head to 2024 Arctic Congress
May 27, 2024 - by Jamie Bell
Congratulations to all the project teams heading to the 2024 Arctic Congress next week! Their dedication and hard work have truly paid off. We are incredibly proud to watch this significant accomplishment with such a remarkable group of individuals.
Among those we would like to especially acknowledge are the students and faculty from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) who embarked upon this journey as part of their biosystems and experiential design class in the fall of 2023. What began as a short class project to explore experiential and biophilic design solutions has blossomed into something truly extraordinary. Their creativity has helped lay a foundation for future programming that bridges countries and cultures in ways we had previously only dreamed possible.
“We’re really proud of the work they did,” said Youth, Arts and Media Team member Tony Eetak, one of the project’s founding members. “When we started our Digital Greenhouse project in 2022, we did not know we would be learning with students from other countries.”
Presenter Anastasia Broman is one of the talented MCAD students who volunteered this past two semesters to support establishing Niriqatiginnga as a locally and regionally-focused innovation ecosystem.
As a program that has grown from the ground up, Niriqatiginnga project would like to share how immensely grateful we are for the support of students and faculty of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design undergraduate Creative Entrepreneurship and Master of Arts in Creative Leadership programs. Students Anastasia Broman, Connor Johnson, and Ellis Anderson, as well as faculty Kami Norland, David Li, and Olaf Kuhlke, have all been pillars of this fantastic journey.
Their contributions are not only making an impact advancing the establishment of Niriqatiginnga as an organization growing from the ground up, but are also setting the stage for the long-term success of regional innovation ecosystems focused on food security, climate change adaptation, and cultural entrepreneurship.
And with that, project T01120, one of our first Niriqatiginnga projects comes to its end. Thank you to everyone who supported our program.
International support and collaboration from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design was instrumental in establishing the Niriqatiginnga program’s foundations as both a project, and grassroots nonprofit organization. Photo: Lucy Eetak
Acknowledgements
From all of us at artsincubator.ca, thank you. We are extremely thankful to the organizers of the 2024 Arctic Congress in Norway for providing this incredible platform and opportunity. The collaborative efforts between MCAD, and the myriad of local, regional and international supporters encapsulates the spirit of unity and shared purpose that this event stands for. To everyone involved, your efforts have moved us closer to our collective goals and demonstrated the potent synergy between academic inquiry, creative practice, and cultural exchange.
Our project would also like to acknowledge the amazing projects, organizations and programs that have been supporting our activities these past two semesters, in particular: the University of the Arctic, Live It Earth, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, University of Minnesota Duluth, OpenAI and its Researcher Access Program for supporting our project activities. We also acknowledge the funding and support from Manitoba Agriculture and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership – Indigenous Food Systems program, and the Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada Indigenous Intellectual Property Protection Program. The Niriqatiginnga Youth, Arts and Media Team is funded with support from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment and Skills Program. We also thank Maeva Gauthier and the University of the Thematic Network on Local-Scale Planning, Climate Change and Resilience.