Alces supported Paño Connections in preparing the Traveling Prison Art Exhibition, a nationally recognized initiative featuring the Conviction Series by founder Eric “Christo” Martinez alongside works from its permanent collection. The collective fosters dialogue and rehabilitation through art created by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists, their families, and communities affected by mass incarceration.

Alces is thrilled to launch the pilot of Public Lands // Public Hands. This responsive initiative partners artists from across Wyoming with public lands advocates and policymakers to co-create a series of free, accessible posters that celebrate—and advocate for—our shared public lands. Great for rallies, hanging in your living room window, or sharing with another pal in the West.

A unique artist residency program at the Snow Survey Cabin, situated along the Snowy Range Scenic Byway in the Brush Creek-Hayden Ranger District of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. Each year, Alces invites three science communicators to participate in this mini-residency, providing creative support, a $150 stipend and up to four nights of accommodation in the Forest Service Snow Survey Cabin.

The White Pelican Project takes its name from the beloved bird that migrates between the Gulf Coast of New Orleans and the Intermountain West, embodying connection across distance and place. This initiative brings New Orleans–based storytellers, artists, and creatives to Albany County to share their practices through free, community workshops.

The Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive was established in August 2022. The Archive contains over one thousand audio recordings collected from March 2020 onward, and preserves diverse representations of folklife; ballads, hymns, tales, poems, children’s songs, and interviews among them. Alces has partnered with the archive to conduct statewide folkloric field recordings to include Wyomingites who can relate a song or folkloric memory to the archive.

High Iron is a moving piece of public art—a modified train car— presently in Laramie, Wyoming through summer 2025. It houses an interactive labor exhibit, an oral history collection station, and is the center of accompanying community programming. High Iron features stories of ancestors who constructed the transcontinental railroad, multigenerational laborers who built the economy of Wyoming, and contemporary rail workers and their unions.

Re-Storying the West hosts state-wide story-gathering events designed to amplify the voices of everyday Wyoming citizens across a range of identities and roles. From the folks who cook our food, educate our children, serve in the military, build our homes, and keep our communities running through the good times and the challenges, their stories deserve a spotlight.

The Youth Justice Institute (YJI) is rooted in youth voice and action. It supports community-building, civic education, and resource mapping with teens in Albany County. YJI supports spaces and programming where young folks can discuss issues that affect them in their communities, explore these issues with adult community leaders, and envision their futures through art making.  

Through Art for All, we provided free arts-integrated opportunities for seven Laramie nonprofits, tailoring each collaboration to the unique needs of our partners. We worked closely with local artists to bring the joy of artmaking into community spaces—supporting them through commissions, purchasing artwork, and hiring them to lead workshops. This responsive, community-informed programming served at least 1,374 individuals and infused $15,000 into Albany County’s creative economy.

Rural Youth Leaders is a new collaborative initiative rooted in place, culture, and the transformative power of youth leadership. Rural Youth Leaders (RYL) is designed to uplift and invest in the leadership of creative young people and the cultural stewards who support them in rural communities. RYL was born from the Rural and Tribal Youth Assembly that took place on Alex Haley’s farm outside of Knoxville, Tennessee in the summer of 2024.

By 2028, Naughton is slated to close and transition from coal to a Natrium reactor nuclear power plant, a project of the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower.This transition holds many unknown consequences for the coal workers these towns. Using oral histories, archival photos, and objects of labor, this online archive and public art project celebrates the multigenerations who worked in the mines and organized their labor.

Wyoming Humanities launched Discuss & Construct, a new statewide project under the NEH’s United We Stand: Connecting through Culture initiative, which seeks to counter hate-based violence through cultural engagement. As part of this effort, we curated an evening with intergenerational Albany County residents, sharing a meal and participating in a guided conversation focused on community challenges, diverse perspectives, and collective hopes for the future.

An ongoing series of community events designed to bring creatives and artmakers together to explore practice, process, and inspiration through conversation. These gatherings celebrate the vibrancy of artistic communities while fostering deeper community connections by creating space for shared learning, listening, and dialogue. We partner with local venues to curate exhibitions, produce artist books, and host vibrant conversations that strengthen social bonds and build understanding across differences.

Alces partnered with the Laramie Plains Civic Center to design interpretive materials that illuminate the rich history of the building. Drawing from LPCC’s archival collections and historical documents, we created a public-facing exhibit that shares the layered story of the space, from its origins to its evolving role in the community. This collaboration aimed to deepen public understanding of the building’s past while enhancing its visibility as a site of cultural and historical significance.

We also love doing work on a national scale. Alces partnered with the Anthracite Heritage Museum to help tell the layered story of immigration, migration and labor in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. Working alongside community members, we co-created an online exhibition highlighting the contributions and lived experiences of Hispanic communities in the area today.