To kick off this year’s annual Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, Brandeis’s Students for Environmental Action club put up an exhibition in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium on Wednesday, April 23. The exhibition, titled “Signs for Change,” was thematically focused on climate justice and featured both artwork made from recycled materials and an interactive display that shared educational environmental facts. One part of the exhibit featured over a dozen pieces of cardboard painted with images and words promoting climate action. The pieces were artfully placed to make a pile while maximizing the number of signs that were visible. Other pieces were taped on the windows above the central pile. This colorful and eye-catching display was accompanied by a quick response code with a link to a petition supporting Mass 350’s Climate Change Superfund Act. 

On an opposite wall was an interactive display whose centerpiece was a giant disposable coffee cup. Taped to the front was a card which prompted the viewer to lift the top of the card to hear the disposable cup’s story. At the end of the narration the cup was headed to a landfill after only a few hours of use and stressed to the listener that this was always the cup’s destination. It was not made to last. The display encouraged people to put their disposable cups in the giant disposable cup to see how quickly it would fill up with plastic. Surrounding the giant cup were other signs, photos and other interactive cards explaining the impact disposable cups have on the environment. The signs contained informative facts about disposable cups, including that over 6.5 million trees are cut down every year just to make paper cups, each paper cup with a sleeve produces 110 grams  of carbon dioxide emissions and local coffee shops brew 200 to 300 cups a day while chain stores brew up to 700 cups a day. 

For a school so focused on environmental justice, SEA’s creative exhibition seemed a fitting way to open up this year’s Festival of the Creative Arts.