November was an exciting month for Northern Initiative-related events, from Pop-Up 100 events to a major event at the Museum called Lights Out, which drew almost 1000 people to celebrate winter in the North.

With POP-UP 100, artists and organizations engage the community with "pop-up" events, such as pop-up museums and forums at the Anchorage Museum and around Anchorage. A pop-up museum is a temporary exhibition created by the people who show up to participate. Pop-up museums often exist for only a few hours and can travel to an array of communities.

Pop-Up 100 will include a variety of events, such as temporary installations, live performances, community-action projects, events and presentations. This month we worked with the University of Alaska Anchorage Center for Community Engagement and Learning, on a pop-up museum in a neighborhood undergoing revitalization issues.  Residents of the Fairview neighborhood in Anchorage celebrated their neighborhood by showcasing memories and images of Fairview in a “museum” that appeared only for a few hours in the parking lot of the Fairview Recreation Center.

We worked with the artist Candy Chang, best known for her community action projects in New Orleans and Las Vegas, to imagine Pop-Up programming in 2015 when we will commemorate Anchorage’s Centennial in collaboration with the Municipality of Anchorage and the Alaska Humanities Forum.  We have now in place an official collaboration with Alaska Public Media to develop a pop-up project that would bring a video van to the Museum and throughout the community to make short films featuring Alaskans as they talk about place – the history, present and future visions for Anchorage.  These will become part of a website and a presentation at the Museum and will recruit students to participate in filming and editing to create compelling Northern narratives.

In 2014, pop-up events will also enliven the museum's annual gala.

On November 8, we hosted our first LIGHTS OUT event as part of the Northern Initiative.  We invited community members to “revel in winter like a true Northerner” at an event that kept the Museum open until midnight.  Throughout the evening, all gallery spaces and community spaces in the Museum were open to ticket holders.  Spaces were enlivened by a large-scale video presentation featuring the work of Arctic artist-in-residence Marek Ranis, LED-adorned dancers, dancing with a DJ, a fashion show, food trucks, live bands in the Museum’s freight elevator, demonstrations on the science of fluorescence, art exchanges, a giant interactive snowglobe with video projects, films, planetarium, shows, photo booths, gallery tours by artists, t-shirt silkscreening and more.

This month the Museum also became part of a CONSORTIUM OF CREATIVE PLACEMAKERS in Anchorage, working with the Community Works artist collective space, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Light Brigade, the University of Alaska, the Anchorage Parks Foundation and others, we are collaborating under the umbrella of the Anchorage Economic Development Council’s Live, Work & Play Initiative, which strives to promote Anchorage as a livable city.Anchorage is a young and growing city with a place for all ages where you can live close to work, make a competitive salary and have a plethora of options for entertainment and outdoor activities.  Live. Work. Play. (LWP) is a grassroots effort focused on community improvement and engagement for the people who live in Anchorage.