INTRODUCTION
The objective of the Be Earth Experience (BEE) is to stimulate positive action towards the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The experience is designed to open minds, unleash the imagination, spark ideas, inspire solutions and increase the sense of personal responsibility and accountability for the future of our world and humanity.
The Be Earth Experience contains four modules:
- Entrance – Presence
- Exhibition – Learn
- VR Experience – Engage
- Exit – Act
Our long-term goal is to make the entire experience available in 100 cities and combined with the online elements reach millions of people by 2030, resulting in 100 million prosocial actions.
The experience will contain four modules, mixing art and technology, digital and physical elements. The third module will be a Virtual Reality platform with the goal of supporting deepened awareness and engagement around the Global Goals.
MODULE DESCRIPTION
1. Entrance – Presence
The entrance will involve all senses and will be designed to create a clear separation from the world the visitor just left to the world they are about to enter. The main goal of the module is to support increased presence and openness to what they are about to experience.
2. Exhibition – Learn
The exhibition module will be designed to give a background to the SDGs. It includes descriptions of each goal using art, data and other forms of communication. The main goal of this module is to introduce the SDGs and the current progress and trajectory. This part of NWG can hold multiple guests at the time and serves as a waiting area for the following module (VR experience).
3. VR Experience – Engage
Stepping into the VR Experience, the guest is no longer an observer but becomes a participant. The VR Experience contains three parts; “1. Overview”, “2. Goal Selection” and “3. My Goal”. The main goal of this module is to support deepened awareness and engagement.
The first part,“Overview” is an immersive experience designed to create an “overview effect”, the shift in awareness that astronauts experience when seeing the earth in space. From space, boundaries vanish, conflicts that divide people become less important, the guest’s own problems are put in perspective.
The second part of the VR experience “Goal Selection” lets the visitor select one of the SDGs through which they are transported into the third part of the VR experience; “Selected Goal Experience”.
The settings and structure of the Selected Goal experience are dependent on which goal the visitor selected. Each of the 17 goals will transport the participant to a different place on earth; it might be to the top of a Mount Everest, to a crowded street in Delhi, to the middle of the Amazon or to a classroom. The range of experiences will be selected to attract both children and adults.
The participant can select one of the goals and in doing so, he/she is transported towards earth and to a place that will be different depending on the goal selected. If the guest e.g. selects “Climate Action” the guest might embody a seal and experience the consequences of the melting glaciers and the sea level increase. Every experience will tell a story around a goal and the participant will have an important role to play in the outcome of the story.
The exit is designed to increase the sense of personal responsibility and accountability for the future of our world and humanity. The main goal of the module is to ensure concrete action towards the SDGs. The exit module includes both the end of the BEE local experience and the time afterward. By completing the BEE, the visitor can become part of the experience by accepting a personal quest and by remaining an engaged part of the Be Earth Community.
We want to make sure that it is accessible from everywhere:
- Anyone with a VR headset can access the VR experiences
- Anyone with access to the Internet via PC or mobile can access the virtual environment
- Anyone with a smartphone can access to engagement mobile apps
Illustrative example: When exiting the VR experience, the guest enters a room filled with quests. The quests can either be written on a card or other objects, they might be AR-enhanced. The guest can accept a quest (a promise to act), or pass the quest onwards to someone who does. A quest can be anything from planting a tree, reducing the use of electricity for a week, learning one new thing about someone with another background, defining what peace means for them, etc. If they accept the quest, they become part of the Be Earth Community, and they can also become part of the community around a specific goal. The online community platform connects the community members and lets them share knowledge and ideas – and the platform supports collaboration around quests/acts. The community activity (the “acts”) might be illustrated in heat maps, network graphs, word-clouds etc. The visualization of the activity has the goal of strengthening the sense of being part of a global, borderless, movement. The visualizations are shown in the second module, the exhibition.
MODULE DESCRIPTION (ONLINE VERSION)
Some elements of Be Earth will be available online, e.g. parts of the exhibition, the quests, and the community forums. You can become a Be Earth Community member without physically visiting the BEE. The VR experience is available to anyone with access to the required VR equipment (owners or public VR venues). Online guests can access most content an infinite number of times.
CALL FOR COLLABORATION
In the realization of the Be Earth Experience, we will collaborate with creators, artists, scientists, public and private sector. In this phase, we are still fundraising and we are primarily looking for partners that can financially support the initiative (XR Impact and the Be Earth Initiative is a non-profit initiative).