faqs

When humans encounter change and loss, we search for meaning. We seek out what will help us to make sense of rupture, to fold and metabolize this change within the arc of our lives and continue the project of living, being, and loving. Art has always helped us navigate these thresholds. We felt this collectively during the depths of the Covid pandemic, when we reached for poetry, music, television – whatever would help us process those strange and difficult times. But human beings navigate ruptures every day, not only in global disaster, but in the daily rhythms of our families and communities. Through all of these experiences, we all deserve to be held by thoughtfully and beautifully designed systems of care.

Forever Lab is a research and innovation lab. We embed artistic practice and scientific rigor into the design of new knowledge, tools, and models of care. We are not a direct care provider, clinic, or service organization. Instead, we generate research, create art, and translate innovations into health systems, cultural institutions, and community settings through partnership.

While our work is in conversation with fields such as art therapy and narrative medicine — and we respect and learn from those traditions — we are distinct from them. Art therapy is a clinical practice focused on individual therapeutic treatment. Narrative medicine centers storytelling within clinical care. Forever Lab operates upstream: we investigate how artistic insight can shape the design of interventions, systems, and research itself. Artists in our lab are collaborators with our scientist peers.

Forever Lab is led by practitioners across both art and science. Our leadership includes accomplished artists with significant creative portfolios as well as scientists with expertise in health services research, implementation science, and patient-centered care. This dual structure ensures that artistic and scientific inquiry operate as co-equal.

We collaborate with artists of many practices, researchers, clinicians, cultural institutions, community organizations, technologists, philanthropists, and health systems leaders who are interested in advancing interdisciplinary innovation at the intersection of art and science. Most of our work happens through structured partnerships, research collaborations, commissioned artistic projects, fellowships, or funded initiatives.

If you are interested in collaborating, we encourage you to reach out with a clear description of your expertise, the question or problem you are interested in exploring, and how you see your work aligning with our mission. Our team reviews inquiries periodically and prioritizes collaborations that are rigorously conceived, values-aligned, and capable of contributing to translational impact across systems. 

We work on timeless, enduring problems in the human journey.