Beyond Data: The Soul of the Plains
While science and social science provide crucial frameworks, the Nebraska Institute of Great Plains recognizes that the full essence of a place—its emotional resonance, its myths, its beauty and its tragedy—is often best captured through the arts and humanities. The Institute's Creative Fellows Program and its associated initiatives ensure that poets, novelists, visual artists, photographers, composers, and filmmakers are integral to the conversation about the region. Their work does not merely illustrate research; it interrogates, complicates, and humanizes it, creating space for wonder, grief, and hope.
The Creative Fellows Program
Each year, the Institute hosts 3-5 artists and humanists for residencies ranging from three months to a full year. Fellows are provided with studio space, a stipend, and, most importantly, access to the Institute's community of scholars and its archives. The expectation is not to produce a literal translation of a research paper, but to engage in a deep dialogue with the place. A photographer might shadow a restoration ecologist, resulting in a series on the minute details of recovering prairie. A composer might use oral history recordings of wind and stories to create an electroacoustic symphony. A poet might use soil science reports as source text for a collection exploring memory and erosion.
Public Humanities Projects and Exhibitions
The Institute actively brings creative work to the public. Its gallery hosts rotating exhibitions that often combine artistic works with scientific artifacts—for example, a painter's large-scale landscapes displayed alongside GIS maps of the same terrain. The "Plains Narrative" series is a popular public program where writers give readings and discuss how the landscape shapes story. The Institute also commissions major works, such as a multi-year project to create a series of documentary films about the Platte River, each focused on a different community along its course.
Integrating Creativity into Research
Perhaps most innovatively, artists are increasingly embedded directly within scientific and social science research teams from the outset. This practice, sometimes called "arts-integrated research," uses creative methods to gather different kinds of data or communicate findings in transformative ways. For instance, a playwright working with sociologists on rural depopulation might conduct interviews and then stage a community-based performance that reveals insights statistics alone could not. A ceramicist working with hydrologists might create a data physicalization—a sculpture where its cracks and textures represent aquifer depletion levels.
The Role of the Humanities in Critical Inquiry
Scholars in history, literature, philosophy, and religious studies at the Institute provide the critical depth necessary to understand the plains' past and imagine its future. They analyze the narratives that have been constructed about the region—the frontier myth, the garden myth, the empty quarter—and expose the power structures they uphold. They study the rich literary tradition of the plains, from Willa Cather to contemporary Indigenous authors. They ask ethical questions about land use, community, and belonging that are essential for guiding policy and personal action.
By championing the arts and humanities, the Nebraska Institute of Great Plains affirms that knowing a place requires both the head and the heart. It ensures that the conversation about the region's future is not just about technical solutions, but also about meaning, identity, and the kinds of stories we choose to tell about ourselves and our home. This creative and humanistic work is what turns data into understanding and policy into lived culture.