Interested in meeting Longyearbyen’s creative community? Join us on the first Friday of the month for a relaxed coffee and conversation at Artica Svalbard. Whether your interests lie in art, literature, design, science, research, or simply enjoying a good cup of coffee, this is a chance to connect with like-minded people and discover what’s happening in the local creative community.

Join us in the Artica Workshop to create your own Pride signs ahead of the Longyearbyen Pride parade on Saturday 29 August! We’ll have materials and equipment ready for you to design, paint and assemble your signs. All are welcome — just bring your ideas, creativity and Pride spirit!

How do the stories we tell about a place shape our understanding of community? Join us for an evening exploring a new research project that uses computational methods to examine nearly two decades of local news coverage from Svalbardposten.

Join Artica and artist Aindreas Scholz for an introduction to experimental soil chromatography. In this two-hour workshop, you’ll explore soil chromatography — an image-making process that transforms soil extracts into intricate circular patterns on paper. Working with local Svalbard soil samples, you’ll create your own chromatograms and discover how differences in soil composition can become visible through colour, form and pattern.

Join us for a one-night exhibition of Jessica MacMillan’s “Insolations”, including an artist’s talk and solar-eclipse viewing (weather dependent).

Interested in meeting Longyearbyen’s creative community? Join us on the first Friday of the month for a relaxed coffee and conversation at Artica Svalbard. Whether your interests lie in art, literature, design, science, research, or simply enjoying a good cup of coffee, this is a chance to connect with like-minded people and discover what’s happening in the local creative community.

Fully Booked

Join American printmaker Todd Anderson for an evening exploring the art of woodcut printmaking. Todd will begin with an informal artist's talk, introducing his practice and sharing how his work combines traditional printmaking with climate science and field research. After the talk, everyone will have the chance to have a go at woodcut printing.

Join visual artist and bookbinder Elize de Beer for a hands-on workshop exploring the art of exposed spine bookbinding. Participants will learn the fundamentals of traditional bookbinding while creating their own handmade notebook featuring a visible stitched spine.

It might be summer, but fear not—First Friday Coffee Club is still open for business!

Join visual artist and bookbinder Elize de Beer for a hands-on workshop exploring the hardcover accordion (concertina) book. Participants will create a folded paper structure attached to rigid covers, resulting in a book that can be expanded, displayed as a sculptural object, or read sequentially.

If you are curious about what Artica’s current residents are working on, join us for an evening of short presentations, soup, and open studio with journalist and writer Audun Aagre, artist Laura J. Lawson, and artist Jessica MacMillan. This informal gathering offers a chance to hear about their practices, learn how their projects are unfolding on Svalbard, and enjoy conversation with fellow community members.

Are you interested in meeting Longyearbyen’s creative community? Join us for coffee club on the first Friday in June.

Audun Aagre, forfatter i residens ved Artica Svalbard, returnerer til Longyearbyen i slutten av mai etter en 14-dagers skiekspedisjon i fotsporene til Gunnar Isachsen og den norske ekspedisjonen i 1906.

As climate change accelerates across the Arctic, questions of adaptation are becoming increasingly urgent—not only for humans, but for the many species that share this environment. In this participatory workshop, Artica resident Celine Charveriat invites participants to rethink adaptation through the perspective of the Svalbard reindeer, exploring how ethics of care, imagination, and strategic foresight might help shape more inclusive futures for life in the Arctic. Combining discussion, storytelling, and speculative thinking, the workshop asks: what might change if humans no longer spoke only for themselves?

Join us for the book launch of Artica Writings 2024: Svalbard’s International Community, the latest print edition in Artica Svalbard’s essay series. This limited-edition publication explores the personal stories of international residents living in Svalbard and reflects on questions of belonging, identity, and life within one of the Arctic’s most internationally diverse communities.

As climate change accelerates across the Arctic, questions of adaptation are becoming increasingly urgent—not only for humans, but for the many species that share this environment. In this participatory workshop, Artica resident Celine Charveriat invites participants to rethink adaptation through the perspective of the Svalbard reindeer, exploring how ethics of care, imagination, and strategic foresight might help shape more inclusive futures for life in the Arctic. Combining discussion, storytelling, and speculative thinking, the workshop asks: what might change if humans no longer spoke only for themselves?

Drawing on her experience as both a psychiatrist and an Arctic nature guide, Olga Tingstedt invites participants to join a process-based workshop series taking place across five sessions. Each workshop will be centred around an excursions in the landscape surrounding Longyearbyen.

Are you interested in meeting Longyearbyen’s creative community? Join us on the first Friday in May (please note there will be no Coffee Club in April).

This four-part series explores the energetic landscape of the body and its ecological intertwining with the Arctic environment. This final session explores the relational field as the shared terrain where fluid systems and human structures meet. Following melt and activation, water moves through fjords and ocean systems.

Drawing on her experience as both a psychiatrist and an Arctic nature guide, Olga Tingstedt invites participants to join a process-based workshop series taking place across five sessions. Each workshop will be centred around an excursions in the landscape surrounding Longyearbyen.

This four-part series explores the energetic landscape of the body and its ecological intertwining with the Arctic environment. In this third session examines environmental response following industrial conversion. Coal, formed from ancient sunlight, becomes active when extracted and burned. The atmosphere changes. In the Arctic, glaciers and permafrost respond.

Drawing on her experience as both a psychiatrist and an Arctic nature guide, Olga Tingstedt invites participants to join a process-based workshop series taking place across five sessions. Each workshop will be centred around an excursions in the landscape surrounding Longyearbyen.

Join us for an evening with Artica resident and Royal Society member Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger, who will share insights from her self-directed research and explorations of the Arctic, alongside reflections on her recently completed record-breaking expedition to Antarctica.

Drawing on her experience as both a psychiatrist and an Arctic nature guide, Olga Tingstedt invites participants to join a process-based workshop series taking place across five sessions. Each workshop will be centred around an excursions in the landscape surrounding Longyearbyen.

This four-part series explores the energetic landscape of the body and its ecological intertwining with the Arctic environment. In this second workshop, we will explore light as energy from the Sun and how it moves across planetary, biological, and technological systems. Participants begin by sensing how light shapes perception, alertness, and daily rhythm within Arctic seasonal shifts.

Drawing on her experience as both a psychiatrist and an Arctic nature guide, Olga Tingstedt invites participants to join a process-based workshop series taking place across five sessions. Each workshop will be centred around an excursions in the landscape surrounding Longyearbyen.

If you are curious about what Artica’s current residents are working on, join us for an evening of short presentations and open studio with artists Ashley Middleton, Lilian Kroth, Mhairi Killin and Thomas Abercromby. This informal gathering offers a chance to hear about their practices, learn how their projects are unfolding on Svalbard, and enjoy good company.

This four-part series explores the energetic landscape of the body and its ecological intertwining with the Arctic environment. Across four lunar phases, the workshops trace a progression from stored earth material, to its conversion into infrastructure, to the environmental responses that follow, and finally to the shared terrain where natural processes and human systems intersect. Each session combines guided meditation, intuitive sound bath, and communal reflection.

Fully booked - waiting list only

Artica is very pleased to welcome back artists Kirsty Banks and Marieke ten Berge for an evening of creative, hands-on printmaking. This workshop introduces drypoint etching using recycled tetra packs—an accessible and versatile printmaking technique that encourages playful experimentation.