Page 84 - 2021 Sustainability Report

COMMUNITY WELL-BEING

An Experience of Discovery

With Company Support, Life and Science Museum Seeks to Inspire
Filled with families, the line to enter
stretched around the corner with
staff politely asking members to limit
their stay to 45 minutes. At its start,
the Earth Moves exhibit was, by
every measure, a smashing success.
Then came COVID-19.

Earth Moves, which debuted at the
Museum of Life and Science in
Durham, North Carolina, in summer
2019, experienced the peaks and
valleys familiar to all outdoors
exhibits with numbers climbing in
the warm months and declining in
the late fall and winter. Just as
museum staff were preparing to
ramp the exhibit back up for its first
full season, the world shut down.

“We shut down in March and it wasn’t until July 2020 that want to encourage them to discover the answers for
we were able to re-open the exhibit,” says Michele Kloda, themselves.”
the museum’s director of learning environments. “It was
actually quite beautiful. It gave people a respite and an Covering just about 1 acre, Earth Moves does just that.
opportunity they couldn’t find anywhere else. We had
From its initial conception through to its grand opening,
people come to us with tears in their eyes and thank us for
the exhibit took about five years to build and includes a
this. To offer something like that to parents and children
number of multi-purpose elements that are designed to
was significant for us.”
appeal to a wide variety of children and adults.
Though still early in its life, Earth Moves, with support from
The waterfall and erosion stream, for example, do a
Martin Marietta, has already had a meaningful impact.
wonderful job of keeping people cool in the summer, but
What excites museum staff most, however, is the effect it
also teach about how water and rock react to one another.
will most certainly have in the future. Carrie Heinonen,
At a simple glance, the stone yard seems like a fun place to
president and CEO of the museum, says she and her team
stack rocks, but it also provides the chance to get hands on
annually welcome about 500,000 guests – most of them
with a wide number of different stone types. All of it is
young children who are experiencing many elements of
possible, in part, because of Martin Marietta.
science for the first time. Knowing this, she and her team
take their work seriously. The Company is currently in the middle of an agreement to
provide $100,000 in funding over a five-year period.
“First and foremost, it’s about inspiring kids to see the
Additionally, the museum has received about 11 tons of in-
practical, fun and engaging side of science and math,”
kind donations from 14 different quarries.
Heinonen says. “Secondarily, the way we build out
exhibitions, and our programming around those Much of that material can be seen in Earth Moves, which,
exhibitions, seeks to enhance critical thinking skills in from its sandstone exploration cave to its sculptures and
children. We don’t want to give them the answers, we walls, is almost entirely made of stone. Some of the

82 2021 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT