Earth Day Eve: Projection Mapping a Sustainable Future

The Sustainability And Storytelling Lab (SAS Lab) collaborated with the Immersive Media Lab for Earth Day Eve 2025 to invite student reflection and engagement about what and who sustains us through imagining how stories about a “sustainable future” might begin. The theme, “sustainable futures,” will be the new common curriculum focus of the CU Boulder campus starting in 2026. SAS Lab Intern Alysia Abbas interviewed students and then Prof. Pezzullo and Prof. Clark designed a projection mapping project, including one for the campus free speech zone and another on bison, the school mascot.

Why a projection? As spaces for free speech shrink, it’s important to reclaim public spaces for youth voices about the future they want and to prompt campus to talk about what we imagine a “sustainable future” might become. (Background: The SAS Lab The Director of the SAS Lab published: “Between crisis and care: Projection mapping ascreative climate advocacy,” Journal of Environmental Media, 1.1 (2020), 59-77. These are the types of high impact learning experiences and interdisciplinary collaborations that are grounded in research and manifested through the CU Boulder College of Media, Communication, and Information.