What if we could
imagine more?
The Centre for Applied Imagination brings artists, scientists, technologists, craftspeople and thinkers together around questions no single field can answer.
ScrollA residency for thinking
The Centre for Applied Imagination is a Qatar-wide programme of Qatar Museums for interdisciplinary research, experimentation and production. It brings together specialists from the arts, sciences, technology, humanities, craft and public life to work on questions no single discipline can answer.
Each project begins with a question rather than a discipline or a brief. CAI gives people time, access to collections, expertise and tools, and the freedom to experiment, and it sees the strongest ideas through to lasting outcomes.
Our mission →
People who would rarely share a room, working as equals on one question.
From the CAI manifesto
A Qatar where people from every field imagine, test and build what comes next, together.
The questions that matter most now sit between fields: how we imagine, learn, work, stay well and make culture as technology grows more capable. Specialists rarely meet there, and institutions are seldom built to bring them together.
When people with deep expertise work side by side on a shared question, with time, tools and permission to fail, each sees what the others cannot. Depth, crossed deliberately and given time, becomes new capability.
About CAI →
From a question to what remains
Every CAI project shares four things. It starts small, by invitation, and stays with one question long enough for something new to grow.
- 01
It starts with a question
Not a discipline or a brief: a question that matters to how we live, learn and imagine.
- 02
It needs different minds
An artist and a clinician, a craftsperson and a data scientist: a question no single field could answer alone.
- 03
It leads somewhere
An artwork, a prototype, a curriculum, a public conversation, a policy idea, new knowledge.
- 04
It leaves something in Qatar
Skills, relationships and ideas that keep growing after the project ends.
Two programmes
The Residency and Being Human
Different minds, one question
Twice a year, the Residency brings specialists from different fields to Qatar to work together on one question, hosted by museums, heritage sites, studios and labs across the country.
- When
- Spring and autumn, from 2027
- Who
- Individuals and mixed teams, by invitation at first
- How long
- From a few days of workshops to up to a year
- Where
- Across Qatar, wherever the question needs
One guest, four moments
A salon series that brings one guest at a time into conversation with Qatar: people whose ideas challenge how we see ourselves and the world. Each visit unfolds in four moments.
- IA welcome gathering
- IIA public activation
- IIIA school session
- IVA closing gathering
Encounters with people whose ideas challenge how we see ourselves and the world.
Being Human
Have a question worth exploring?
CAI begins by invitation. Register your interest to hear first when the open call opens, and to find out what we look for in a CAI project.
Register interest