BlackMuse Labs

We don't only teach people about the future. We build things inside it.

BlackMuse Labs explores how emerging technologies can support learning, workforce development, history, culture and industry.

BlackMuse Labs is where education, workforce development, community and emerging technology come together through experimentation and product development.

Some ideas begin as classroom questions. Others begin with a workforce problem, a community story or an experience that could be made better. BlackMuse Labs gives those ideas somewhere to become real.

Projects

What we're building

MarkerQuest

Tacoma pilot

History shouldn't only live inside a textbook.

A location-based exploration platform connecting people to historical stories and markers where history happened.

MarkerQuest is a location-based exploration platform designed to help people discover history in the places where it actually happened.

Beginning with a Tacoma pilot, MarkerQuest connects explorers to historical markers and stories highlighting Black, Indigenous and other historically underrepresented communities. Participants can discover locations, encounter stories, follow trails and use QR-enabled experiences to connect physical places with deeper digital context.

The larger idea is simple: what if exploring a city could also mean discovering the people and stories underneath it? MarkerQuest is part technology platform, part public-history experiment and part invitation to explore communities differently.

Tacoma pilot
Historical markers
Black, Indigenous + underrepresented stories
QR-enabled exploration
Location-based discovery
Trails
Community history
America 250 context

Explore MarkerQuest

SterileVR

In development

Practice the work before stepping onto the floor.

Immersive workforce training for sterile processing.

SterileVR is BlackMuse's immersive workforce-training initiative focused on sterile processing. The project explores how virtual reality can give learners a structured environment to understand workflows, practice procedures, recognize equipment and build familiarity with sterile-processing environments before or alongside traditional hands-on training.

SterileVR represents a larger direction for BlackMuse: using immersive technology not simply to make training more interesting, but to make complex environments more accessible, repeatable and understandable.

We began by bringing VR into classrooms. Now we are exploring how those same technologies can help prepare people for real industries and real work.

Decontamination
Preparation & Packaging
Sterile-processing workflows
Equipment and instrument recognition
Workplace procedures

Audiences

Healthcare systems
Sterile processing departments
Workforce-training programs
Students preparing for sterile-processing careers

Digital Archives + Community Memory

Exploration area

Memory deserves more than a filing cabinet.

Exploring how emerging technology can preserve and share community stories.

BlackMuse is exploring how digital preservation, oral histories, 3D objects, interactive archives and virtual spaces can help communities keep and share their own stories.

This is a capability and exploration area — not a completed contracted project. It grows out of the same instinct behind MarkerQuest: history is already around us, and technology can help people find it, hold it and pass it on.

Digital preservation
Oral histories
3D objects
Interactive archives
Virtual spaces
Community storytelling

Model Behavior

Technology changes quickly. The questions underneath it don't.

Model Behavior is a BlackMuse educational series exploring artificial intelligence, education, ethics, culture and the choices being made as AI enters everyday life.

Watch the Series

Virtual Resource Center