Hands holding blocks and cards for Future Builder SustainABLE activity

Sustainability

A compilation of sustainability public engagement and professional learning resources. Annual events include: World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, Earth Hour, Earth Day, National Public Works Week, Campus Sustainability Month, and more.

Profesional Development

Sustainability and Museums: Cover Guide featuring a father and young child interacting with a giant balloon

Professional Resources for Sustainability

Tools to help museum professionals plan and implement sustainability projects and programs.
Professionals at project meeting

Sustainability Fellowship

NISE Network’s Sustainable Futures initiative supports museums and similar cultural organizations in their efforts to integrate sustainability into all aspects of their institution. Through the Sustainability Fellowship program, staff at museums participate in a series of online workshops to develop a sustainability-related project at their organization while developing relationships with a broader community of practice.

Activities

Two decks of cards from the Cards for Humanity Activity

Games for the Future

In this activity, learners participate in futures thinking and learn about the United Nation's global goals for sustainable development by playing a series of games.
Image of various crafting materials for the Watch and Create activity

Watch and Create! Creativity For Sustainability

In this activity, learners work together to explore their relationship with technology and examine ways to make sustainable media consumption choices.
Sustainable Futures logo in full color

Ecosystem Engineers

In this activity, learners will investigate an ecosystem interaction web to understand the interconnections between people, other organisms, and habitats.
Explore Science: Sustainable Futures logo in full color

Good Life Challenge

In this activity, learners connect individual actions that support the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, (SDG).
Sustainable Futures logo in full color

Imagine Our Community 2100

In this activity, learners are lead through a discussion-based activity and are encouraged to imagine their community 80 years into the future using the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Young learner sorting colored marbles into three different colored boxes using a tube and funnel

Water Roll

In this activity, learners decide how they would distribute water between homes, farms and factories by sliding marbles down a tube into various containers.
Materials image of the Future Builder activity featuring wooden colored blocks and an explanation guide

Future Builder

In this activity, learners build a tower representing a future community. Learners will discover how sustainability is a balance of economic, societal, and environmental efforts.
Image of three young learners looking at recycled materials card

Creative Reinvention

In this activity, learners are asked to guess what recycled materials were used to make various products, and challenge them to think of creative ways to reuse the waste materials in their homes.
Illustration of a person in an astronaut suit holding up their hand for a high five

High Five for the Future

Promotional graphic signage for sustainability social media photo opp.
hands drawing an image prompted by a card that pictures a changing community

My Community

In this activity, learners can draw their neighborhoods and talk about what they like best or least about the places they live. Then, learners are challenged to draw potential improvements they'd like to see in their communities.
Image of kids lined up preparing for a game of Systems Scramble

Systems Scramble

In this activity, learners will have conversations about how systems work, and how we can work together to better understand systems and work toward creating a more sustainable future.

Forums

Sustainable Futures logo in full color

Women's Rights and Sustainability

In this activity, learners will use a set of issues and character cards to consider the importance of women’s rights to sustainability in a guided conversation format.

Theater and Stage Programs

Survival theater gameshow logo featuring an image of the earth

Survival: A Game Show about People, Planet, and Prosperity

In this activity, learners will work as a team to discover that the three main pillars of sustainability (People, Planet, and Prosperity) are interconnected and necessary to a healthy future.

Projects

Sustainable Futures logo in full color

Sustainability in Science and Technology Museums

NISE Network’s Sustainable Futures initiative supports museums and similar cultural organizations in their efforts to integrate sustainability into all aspects of their institution, including decision-making, operations, programs, and community partnerships. The program uses a broad definition of sustainability, which aligns with the UN global goals.
Sustainable Futures logo

Sustainable Futures

Public engagement programs and professional resources related to sustainability and museums
Child using putting marbles into tube with funnel in Water Roll SustainABLE kit activity

SustainABLE Kit

Activities and professional development resources designed to engage the public in sustainability.

Online Workshops

Blue logo for online workshop recordings

Online Workshop Recording: Sustainability in Museums Around the World: Working Together to Create a Sustainable Future (Part 1)

Online professional development workshop recording (2020).
Blue logo for online workshop recordings

Online Workshop Recording: Sustainability and Museum Operations: Practices, Partnerships, and Resources to Help Your Organization Become More Sustainable (Part 2)

Online professional development workshop recording (2020).
Blue logo for online workshop recordings

Online Workshop Recording: Sustainability and Museum Visitors: Exhibits, Programs, and Other Ways to Engage the Public (Part 3)

Online professional development workshop recording (2020).

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable Development Goals Poster with icons for each goal

More Resources

Event Planning

Cover of the Sustainability in Science Museums Planning and Promotional Guide featuring a young learner coloring on a sheet of paper

Sustainability in Science Museums Planning and Promotional Guide

Promotional materials for SustainABLE Kit including logos, colors, and graphics in multiple formats.

Annual Events

World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development (March 4)

Earth Hour (mid-March) 

Earth Day (April 22)
National Environmental Education Week (week of Earth Day)

National Public Works Week (mid-May)

World Environment Day (June 5)

Campus Sustainability Month (October)

Earth Science Week (second full week in October) (October 10-16, 2021)

America Recycles Day (November 15)

Working with STEM Experts Guide cover including an image of expert puring a liquid and using a strainer with a girl and her family at a museum public event

Finding STEM Experts

Partner Highlights

First Page of the German Translation of Cards for Humanity from Games for the Future

Partner Highlight: Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg in Karlsruhe, Germany Translates the NISE Network's "Games for the Future" Activities

March 5, 2024
Christina Leavell, Arizona State University
A German translation of the NISE Network's "Games for the Future" activities is now available!
Young participants investigate worms with magnifying glasses

Partner Highlight: Imagination Station in Toledo “Crushes” Sustainability Goals with New Recycling and Waste Reduction Initiative

October 5, 2022
Caitlyn Carter, Imagination Station
Partner highlight about the work of Imagination Station and how their participation in the 2011 Sustainability Fellowship has been a catalyst for change.
Photo of an Gaithersburg Museum educator accepting a going green award

Partner Highlight: From green cocktails to community sustainability in Gaithersburg, MD

May 27, 2021
Karen Lottes, Gaithersburg Community Museum
Featured in the June 2021 newsletter, the Gaithersburg Community Museum details how they have been able to successfully engage their community over conversations on sustainability through creative programming.
Sustainability Cohort C Fellow Cape Fear Museum image

Partner Highlight: Finding Success in Virtual Sustainability Programming

October 7, 2020
Nich Weller, Arizona State University
Efforts to incorporate and promote sustainability in the age of COVID might look a bit different than they did last year, but that hasn’t slowed the progress and ideas of some dedicated museum professionals. In September, the third cohort of NISE Network's Sustainability Fellowship Program shared their progress implementing a sustainability project at their museums.
Children's Creativity Museum Sustainability Challenges for Kids header

Partner Highlight: The Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco unveils an ongoing event series, Sustainability Challenges For Kids

October 4, 2020
Children's Creativity Museum
The Children’s Creativity Museum unveils an ongoing event series focused on making sustainability accessible for young children, Sustainability Challenges For Kids, which is a collection of activities to be done at home centered around the important concept of sustainability-making choices that help people, communities, and environments be healthy now and in the future.
LICM Milkweed garden

Partner Highlight: Sustainability and Citizen Science at Long Island Children’s Museum

June 5, 2019
Claire Flynn, STEM Initiatives Program Director, Long Island Children’s Museum
Through the Sustainability Fellowship program, Long Island Children’s Museum created a Milkweed Garden and offers programming that allows visitors to participate in the the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, a citizen science project based at the University of Minnesota. I chose this project because I wanted to create an experience that involved our visitors in citizen science and gave them a way to consider how climate change is affecting our local community.
OMSI

Partner Highlight: Sustainable Decision Making Framework for Exhibits

June 3, 2019
Dave Laubenthal, Director of Creative Services, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)
Like most hands-on museums, OMSI ends up with a backlog of older exhibits that still have value but don’t have a current place in our galleries. As a result, they languish in dark corners, outbuildings, closets, rented storage spaces, and...
Mote SEA Show image

Partner Highlight: A New Virtual Learning Program: Mote SEA Show Makes a Big Splash! Sarasota, FL

November 26, 2019
Ross Johnston, Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, Sarasota, FL
Looking for the intersection of education and entertainment? Marine science and museums? Look no further than Mote Marine Laboratory’s new virtual learning program, the “Mote SEA Show”! Mote’s team of marine science educators is taking learning beyond the classroom, literally, with a new interactive, livestream marine science morning show. This innovative, educational broadcast focuses on illuminating what goes on behind-the-scenes in marine science and research.
Image of child standing in front of a poster reading "High Five for the Future"

Partner Highlight: Sustainability Solutions Festival Family Day

March 5, 2016
Rae Ostman
On February 16, 2016 Arizona State University's Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives hosted its third annual Sustainability Solutions Festival Family Day at Arizona Science Center. During this event, prototype activities from the sustainABLE hands-on activity kit were tested.