FAQ

Anyone can participate, no matter their experience with art or making snow sculptures. Students will be there to assist those who’d like to learn. They can be identified by their aprons. If you wish to offer some sort of service or assistance, become a partner.

Polar Bear Fest will happen as soon as there is a decent quantity of good snow to work with (approx. six inches). Check out the weather forecast and sign up to receive notifications about the gatherings. And of course, you can go out as soon as you feel you can start building and continue as long as you want. You can also follow our social media for all announcements.

If you can build a snowman, you also can build a snowbear! Take a look at our comics.

While our main goal is to have as many snowbears as possible on the Great Lawn to draw attention to and support for our first Gathering, you can of course create your own bears in your neighborhood, and people will see that you are part of the larger effort. Please remember to tag us on Instagram @polarbearfest so we can continue to spread the message and build the community.

When the snow melts, so will the snowbears; The melting is part of the process and if it doesn’t get too warm, they can be restored, even repeatedly. In 2021 Snowbanksy restored them daily for 3 weeks until it became too warm. Then she organized a candle-light snowbear funeral with musicians from the neighborhood.

Polar Bear Fest breaks free of traditional organizational expectations. Its purpose is to make us think and feel and act together, and in ways we have not even begun to imagine, for the good of us all and for the future world.

Our acronym PBF is also used by the largest oil refinery in the world, and we reclaim it for our snowbears and us.

Lumbung is an Indonesian concept that stands for sharing things, working together, helping and looking after each other, and friendship. We want to introduce that concept as the basis for a movement that unites people from all walks of life and makes them concerned about others and the world.

In the art world, Lumbung represents a completely new and unexpected perspective, one not informed by the cut-throat, celebrity-oriented, and mercenary values that have overtaken it in recent decades, but by simplicity, decency, and humility. And it proposes a different way of seeing the value of what we make and why we make it. Art can affect us without entering the competitive free-for-all that defines the market. It can be simple and still profound, can bring us together rather than polarize and divide us. After all, we’re the ones who give meaning to art!

Heide Hatry (Snowbanksy and founder of Polar Bear Fest) is a German artist based in New York, who is best known for her body-related performances and her work employing atypical art materials.

Charlie Richards is a senior at Wagner College on Staten Island, studying theatre and art and graduating this spring. He is interning with Hatry and they developed Polar Bear Fest together. All comics featured on the website are created under his pen name @CRR4dood.

Stan Schnier is a photographer who met Snowbanky in 2021 and provided most of the photographs on this website. He also created a documentary that you can watch.

If YOU would like to help with organizing the Gatherings, additional events, fundraising, brainstorming, etc. please send your inquiry to polarbearfestnyc@gmail.com.

We will be happy to provide a testament of community service on a case-by-case basis for students who help facilitate Polar Bear Fest. Just ask!