CALL FOR PROJECTS
📍Hadsel Living-Lab workshop
🗓️ 1-5 June 2026, in-person workshop days.
We are looking for creative and passionate individuals
Are you inspired by crafts, culture, and heritage? Do you have an idea you’ve been wanting to bring to life? Would you like to help promoting a more engaged cultural community in Lofoten and Vesterålen?
If arts and crafts, design, performance, music, or gastronomy drive your creativity, we are here to help you turn your vision into reality. We will support you in developing a prototype through a collaborative development workshop.
What do we offer?
- Participation in a structured Living Lab development process
- Funding for development of project prototypes.
- Expert mentorship and interdisciplinary collaboration
- Travel, accommodation and compensation for working hours.
- We will connect you to an European network of creators through the EU-funded Culturality project
How does it work?
- By applying to this call, you will enter a selection process that values originality, viability, and engagement with arts, crafts, traditions and the local community with tourism.
- Throughout the Living Lab you will receive dedicated expert mentorship, collaborator matchmaking, and hands-on development of your project prototype.
- Your idea will be connecting you to a European network of creators through the EU-funded Culturality project.
What is a Living Lab?
The Living- Lab workshop is a space where people comes together to collaborate, explore and learn collectively around ideas or complex problems. It is open to anyone, regardless of their background, and is designed to activelly foster diversity.
The process consist of four stages:
- Problematise – Bring your idea, rethink it, and explore its possibilities
- Prototype – Build a quick, low-cost version of your idea (object, process, or experience)
- Test – Try it with real users or audiences, see what works, and refine it
- Communicate – Share outcomes and learnings so others can adapt, improve, or scale it
Is this for you?
This opportunity is open to individual artists, cultural practitioners, artisans, artisans and neo-artisans, designers, artists, performers, traditional and contemporary musicians, and local chefs, cooks and other creative people, organizations and institutions. We welcome all creative ideas, especially those that engage with cultural heritage, regenerative tourism, explore innovative approaches, and strengthen the local community and cultural ecosystem of Lofoten and Vesterålen.
Each applicant may submit one proposal to take part. It is essential that the ideas presented are open to the participation of others who may join as collaborators and who can contribute to, complement, or transform the idea during the production laboratory. Once the ideas have been selected, a call will be launched for anyone wishing to collaborate in bringing them to life. Working groups will then be formed, made up of the person proposing the idea and the registered collaborators, with a maximum of sixpeople per idea.
Need inspiration?
We welcome creative ideas that reinterpret, revitalize, document, reimagine, or engage in contemporary contexts. We particularly value ideas that engage with regenerative tourism: initiatives that support local life, respect community spaces and the environment, highlight local knowledge, and contribute to sustainable development for both residents and visitors.
We also give special attention to projects that engage with Norwegian cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO, or included on its tentative list, such as traditional costumes, clinker boat traditions, and practices linked with the nature and culture of Lofoten and Vesterålen.
Projects may explore living heritage and cultural practices, including:
- Traditional art, crafts and skills linked to them
- Food culture
- Music, dance, and rituals
- Local stories, oral histories, folklore, and memory.
- Cultural practices rooted in place and community life
- Living heritage linked to identity and intergenerational transmission
We are particularly interested in ideas that:
- Revitalize heritage and/or community spaces: Reuse of historic or industrial buildings as workshops, studios, micro-museums, multifunctional community spaces, or housing for artists, with community-based and sustainable management.
- Share craft, heritage, and knowledge transmission: Projects that preserve and share traditional skills, connect tangible and intangible heritage with contemporary practices, creative expressions and local identities.
- Encourage collaboration between artists, artisans, and local groups: Initiatives that strengthen networks of artists and craftspeople, encouraging collaboration, shared resources, and/or visibility of cultural events, including research and heritage dissemination.
- Create respectful, develop low-impact experiences where tourists may participate, learn, or contribute: Projects that support the local economy through sustainable tourism, creating cultural experiences, guides, educational programs, or activities that connect visitors with the region’s identity and history
Apply now!
Application deadline: 16th April 2026
Publication
Selected ideas will be published on Museum Nord’s website and through its communication channels. All applicants will also be notified by email.
You do not have a finished idea yet but would like to contribute? You are welcome to apply as a collaborator. The call for collaborators will open at the end of April.
Timeline
- Call for ideas: 16th March – 16th April
- Publication of selected projects: 20th April
- Call for collaborators 21th April to 15th May
- Prototype workshop: 1st – 5th June
Selection criteria
- Preference will be given to ideas that can be developed in Lofoten and/or Vesterålen.
- The idea should fit within the theme of the call.
- The description should be clear and concrete.
- It should be possible to develop a first prototype during the laboratory.
- Originality and innovation will be valued.
- Projects should be sustainable over time and adaptable to similar contexts.
Commitments of selected participants
- Attend all sessions and participate in the development of the prototype.
- Document and share knowledge under an open license.
- Publicly present the prototype at the end of the laboratory.
- Contribute to a respectful and inclusive working environment.
- Acknowledge contributions from all members of the working group and take care of equipment and spaces.
- Results and materials will be published under a Creative Commons license that allows reuse and adaptation.
Limitation of liability
Proposers are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions for the use of any material protected by copyright. The organisers are not responsible for the data or content used by participants. Participation in this call implies acceptance of these terms.