About the project
Launched in 2020 as part of Dr. Barbara Hild’s PhD, this collaborative project was oryginally designed to connect academia and guiding schools across Iceland, Norway, and Greenland to strengthen guide education and build a platform for knowledge exchange in Arctic adventure tourism.
Funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordplus Horizon Project ID: NPHZ-2022/10060), the 2022–2024 phase focused on integrating tourist safety research into education, hosting seminars with local stakeholders, and collecting data to support further research.
The network has laid the groundwork for future initiatives—student exchanges, expanded field placements, stronger links between education and the tourism sector, and continued collaboration across the region.
During 2022–2024, we organized three regional workshops (in Longyearbyen, Nuuk, and Reykjavík), participated in the Svalbard guides’ conference, presented at Arctic Circle Assemblies. During our workshops we have connected more then 80 stakeholders.
In November 2024, we hosted the 1st Arctic Risk Management Conference in Reykjavík, bringing together 70 participants from across the Arctic to share experiences, research, and best practices in risk management.
The 2025 Be Safe North conference continues this effort—raising awareness and providing a platform for knowledge exchange among tourism stakeholders, educators, and researchers across the Arctic.
Aligning research with practice
Our workshops served as a platform to gather data related to knowledge co-creation.
One key finding revealed that the most effective way to raise awareness and improve guiding practices is by creating opportunities for knowledge co-creation among operators, guides, educators, and other stakeholders.
This conference is a space for knowledge exchange among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working in Arctic and remote field settings. By sharing guiding practices, incident cases, and strategies for risk mitigation, we aim to foster a stronger culture of safety, learning, and collaboration across companies, guides and policy-makers.