Climate change is stressful. Yet Arcadia Earth, the pop-up exhibit just north of Houston in NYC, soothes. Made entirely of upcycled materials, each breathtaking and immersive installation is designed to offer solutions for reducing and reversing your impact on the planet.

Amidst calming smells and earthly and oceanic sounds, walking its 15 rooms is akin to gliding through a dream of floating junk-made jellyfish, cardboard seascapes, mossy tunnels and plastic waves. Combined with AR and VR, the devastating facts on climate change presented are not only digestible but empowering. ‘Just a spoonful of sugar…’

“Globally, the average person unintentionally consumes the equivalent of a credit card of microplastics every week.”

Founder and father Valentino Vettori spent three months creating Arcadia Earth as a solution based space that exchanges fear for viable positivity. Each installation is created in collaboration with an artist both talented and environmentally driven. The exhibit ends with an opportunity to make a personal pledge towards eliminating our current strain on Earth’s resources.

“In some regions of the gyres (a system of circulating ocean currents) plastic now outweighs plankton 6 times over. 50% of this plastic is from single use plastics- used for seconds, polluting the planet.”

Arcadia Earth amazes and educates yet is concrete; the proceeds of every ticket sale goes towards Oceanic Global. They can be booked in advance online, but my partner and I had no problem buying them on the spot. We were lucky to go during a weekday afternoon and could walk the exhibit by ourselves. Arcadia Earth, located at 718 Broadway, is set to run until January with a possible extension into the summer. Take your children, friends, and spread the word.