The ECO-STAR North program supports innovators by providing tools and frameworks for Arts, Creative, and Climate Entrepreneurship. Our approach is uniquely shaped by a blend of community-based participatory research, interdisciplinary arts, and mixed-methodological applied artificial intelligence research.
A Framework for Decolonizing Northern Innovation and Building Data Sovereign Creative Economies
Across the vast, culturally rich landscapes of Manitoba, Northwestern Ontario and the broader Canadian North, a powerful creative movement is taking shape. From the intricate beadwork of the Red River Metis and Dene to the striking sculptures of Inuit carvers and the digital art of a new generation, creativity in these regions has always been more than expression — it is storytelling, identity, and survival.
ECO-STAR North is a new initiative designed to strengthen and reimagine the creative economy of Northwestern Ontario and the circumpolar North on local terms. It brings together artists, Elders, youth, and innovators to co-create a new framework for creative enterprise — one that reflects community values, honours Indigenous knowledge, and supports self-determined growth.
Reclaiming Innovation: From Markets to Relationships
The project adapts the well-known ECO-STAR innovation model through a decolonizing lens, transforming it from a business tool rooted in Western ideas of markets and competition into something rooted in relationship, reciprocity, and collective well-being. In this reimagined version, Customer becomes Community. Advantage becomes Our Unique Story. Success is measured not in profit alone, but in cultural strength, language preservation, and the well-being of people and place — across Northwestern Ontario and beyond.
Creative Enterprise Labs: Where Art, Research, and Community Meet
At the heart of ECO-STAR North are Creative Enterprise Labs — collaborative spaces where local artists, entrepreneurs, and youth experiment, learn, and lead. Supported by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), these labs are places for shared creation and research, using both traditional storytelling and cutting-edge tools like arts-based inquiry and participatory action research. In Northwestern Ontario, these spaces connect land-based knowledge with digital creation, allowing participants to map their entrepreneurial journeys through art, storytelling, and media — creating new knowledge from lived experience.
Building Digital Sovereignty in the North
A key innovation of the project is its focus on data sovereignty and artificial intelligence — AI developed with and for the community. In Northwestern Ontario and across northern regions, this technology will not replace human creativity but instead lighten administrative burdens, expand market access, and connect local creators to new opportunities.
From automating funding applications to helping artists reach global audiences ethically and fairly, ECO-STAR North aims to ensure that the tools of the digital age serve northern creators — not the other way around.
A Living Framework for a Thriving Northern Future
Ultimately, ECO-STAR North is about more than frameworks or technology. It is about reclaiming the power to define innovation on our own terms. In blending ancestral knowledge with contemporary practice, this initiative is laying the groundwork for a sovereign, sustainable, and thriving creative economy in Northwestern Ontario and across the North — one that will inspire communities across the circumpolar world.
The work begins now.
ECO-STAR North invites artists, educators, and community leaders to join in co-creating this new path forward — where innovation grows from the land, the language, and the stories that have always been here in Northwestern Ontario and beyond.
Acknowledgements
This project has been seeded in 2025 with generous support from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Creative Entrepreneurship Program, Enterprise Development Group, The Arts Incubator Winnipeg, Art Borups Corners, the Manitoba Arts Council Indigenous 360 Program, The Labovitz School of Business and Economics at the University of Minnesota Duluth, The Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program, and the OpenAI Researcher Access Program.
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