Increasing awareness for soil biodiversity and protection

Abstract

The Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz developed an international touring exhibition with the title ‘The Thin Skin of the Earth – Our Soils’ as the national contribution to the International Year of the Soil 2015. Since the opening of the exhibition in October 2015 it had been shown at six localities and seen by more than 120,000 visitors. It will tour at least for another four years. The exhibition deals with soil biodiversity, the heterogeneity of soils as well as soil protection. It meets the challenge to present objects, processes, topics and formats completely unknown to most of the public by using recent most specifically developed digital and analogue formats and a sophisticated scenography. To address its main messages to the visitors, emotionalizing and immersive forms of information transfer are crucial and, therefore, central elements of the educational concept. The general concept behind the exhibition, its contents, the educational approaches applied and the major results of an external evaluation are described. Conclusions are drawn on the suitability of touring exhibitions and the approaches chosen to inform and sensitize a broad public for soil protection.

Keywords

• soil protection
• soil biodiversity
• touring exhibition
• scenography
• public awarness