Empreinte carbone, l’expo ! (Carbon Footprint, the Exhibition!) at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, France, demonstrates the power of science and technology museums to confront global challenges while rethinking their own identities.

The main goals were to start a discussion with our visitors on a sensitive topic to deconstruct preconceived ideas about our carbon footprint, unravel the mechanisms behind it and offer visitors an opportunity to reflect on the subject. It was part of a larger plan to open the museum to contemporary issues and to engage further with our audience.

It went on to be an opportunity to re-examine the collections of the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a museum firmly rooted in the 19^th century and the technical explosion known as the Industrial Revolution. As its collections include objects that have made a significant contribution to the spectacular uncontrolled increase in humanity’s carbon footprint over the last two centuries, the exhibition created a space to think about the museum’s identity and what it means to be a technology museum in time of ecological crisis.

In an attempt to merge form and content, the exhibition was eco-designed and produced with a new approach in order to reduce its own carbon footprint. The combination of a scenography based on reusing and renting furniture and using a modular design and the hiring of circular economy players to manufacture the rest allowed the museum to cut by half its exhibition emissions.

This care for a more sustainable exhibition gave birth to a renewed approach of interactive exhibits, so that visitors can express their convictions, including refusal and rejection, in a more open dialogue with the institution. Inspired by the hands-on and active learning dynamic of science centers, Carbon Footprint, the Exhibition! moved away from the model of top-down learning to visitors placed in a passive position and enabled the museum to move towards an open space where knowledge flows in multiple directions. All this without putting aside the museum’s signature of creative and engaging exhibits, thus making the visit a thought-through and yet fun experience.

This approach extended to the events around the exhibition, where committed actors (associations, activists, scholars) around related themes like repair and low tech, were invited to develop weekends of practice, exchange and concrete action. From repair cafés to slow cooking classes and mending workshops, these activities were both a way to engage step further, beyond discourses and good intentions, and to insert the museum in a network of strong-committed actors.

In line with the new ICOM definition and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Carbon Footprint, the Exhibition! positions the museum as an inclusive, socially relevant and engaged institution.