This complimentary family and community event will explore the causes and effects of climate change and help you and your family learn how to have a role in reducing its impact on your community and the world. Designed for all ages, NBM Climate Day will offer essential information and hands-on, interactive activities for the whole family led by architects, landscape architects and builders that show new ways that they are addressing climate change.

Free, drop in. No registration required. All ages welcome.

Activities:
Anacostia Watershed Society
Learn how this local organization raises awareness about and interest in reviving and restoring the health of the Anacostia River.

Casey Trees
Understand the benefits of trees and the important role they play in reducing heat during the summer in your neighborhood

Coloring and Green Scavenger Hunt

The Ice Box Challenge
Discover how important insulation is in keeping hot and cold temperatures out of your home

Mass Timber
Discover how logs were a simple, abundant, and easy building material by constructing your own cabin out of Lincoln Logs.

Planet Curious City by Design
Create buildings out of recycled materials to help build Planet Curious City

Projects from the Green New Deal Superstudio
Explore selected projects from the Green New Deal Superstudio to see how built environment disciplines are reimagining the future and translating the goals of decarbonization, jobs, and justice into on-the-ground practices and built works.

Tee-shirt Yarn
Create your own yarn by recycling old tee shirts

Story times: 

11:15 am and 12:15 pm
The Bicycle Fence and Selling Eggs
Follow along as artist, sculptor, landscape designer, and recycler Tom Nolls reads The Bicycle Fence and Selling Eggs, part of his “Trash to Treasure” series of books.

1:15 pm
City Green and Green Green
Enjoy a reading from Museum staff of City Green by DyAnne Disalvo-Ryan and Green Green: A Community Gardening Story by Marie Lamba and Baldev Lamba.

2:15 pm
My Garden and Beyond the Pond
Get inspired as Museum staff read My Garden by Kevin Henkes and Beyond the Pond by Joseph Kueffler.

Lightning Talks:

1:05 pm
Breakthroughs in Sustainable Construction
Virgilio Barrera, director of government and public affairs, shows how Holcim, the world’s global leader in building solutions, is building for people and planet. Join this presentation to learn how Holcim is working to build a greener, smarter and healthier future for all, including its work on 3-D printing, digital tools, and innovative building materials.

1:30 pm
The Green New Deal Superstudio
Megan Barnes, program manager, Landscape Architecture Foundation, explains how landscape architects and designers of the built environment have a key role in addressing the climate crisis, by way of the Green New Deal Superstudio Exhibition, on view in the Museum’s Great Hall.

1:55 pm
Building Relationships: How to Connect People, Buildings, and Nature
James Ball, co-chair of the Net-Zero Energy Coalition shows how buildings are a functioning system, not just in their own components but in how they work with the human body and natural environment.

2:20 pm
Climate Literacy and Where it Begins
Aishah-Nyeta Brown, a Gen-Z advisor, Climate Mental Health Network, explains that understanding Climate Change starts somewhere and is individual, local, community-based, and global.

Planet Curious - A World of Climate Curiosity is presented as part of the National Building Museum’s Climate Action Weekend and its Climate ABC series’ programming. The weekend starts with the Grounding the Green New Deal Summit that examines the intersection of policy, design, and advocacy to identify ways to accelerate individual and collective actions to effect change. Learn more about the summit here (you will be taken to the summit's official, secure site).

Climate ABC and Planet Curious are supported by: