It’s no secret that the arts have been consistently cut from our nation’s schools.

In fact, the New York Department of Education has decreased spending on the arts by over 47% over the past 7 years. If art is no longer in the classroom, then the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted to give the youth of New York an unique opportunity to bridge the gap in art education. Verizon and The Met have an existing partnership and a shared goal to inspire learning. For years, Verizon has been at the forefront of the effort to provide tech education to schools across America, ensuring that kids expand their worldview using our technology. Together, Verizon and The Met looked to create an art experience that could inspire a generation of new art lovers through technology.

The Met Replica is an interactive metaverse learning experience using mobile gaming as an incentive for art education. Find the original artwork IRL. And replicate it in AR. As the art transformed from real to Roblox, kids created their own personal avatars that became walking pieces of art history, mixing and matching with other virtual items to create something artfully one-of-a-kind. Replicas moved beyond the physical walls of The Met and into Roblox, living on and inspiring art education throughout the infinite space of the metaverse.

The New York Department of Education alone decreased spending on the arts by 47% over the past 7 years. Our strategy focused on bridging the gap for students in NY, giving them access to art education in their own backyard: The Met. Verizon and The Met have an existing partnership and a shared goal to inspire learning. Verizon has been at the forefront of the effort to provide tech education to schools across America, ensuring that kids expand their worldview using our technology. In order to draw kids to the museum for learning, the status quo of analog educational platforms would not be enough. Verizon leaned into the network to reach tech-savvy Gen Zers. Online games like Roblox are some of the most popular platforms for ages 8-14 . Today, with over 400 million users in the metaverse, 80% younger than 16, it was a good place to start.

The exhibit launched in early August, leading into back-to-school. Prior, we began PR plus advertising on The Met’s social handles, website comms, in-museum stanchions, marketing cards and digital displays with a QR code to download the Replica app.

The app sent kids on an interactive, educational hunt turning 2 million sq ft of the largest museum in North America into an infinite metaverse playground.

Working with curators, we painstakingly replicated 40 artifacts into Roblox virtual items. With over 152 educational clues scattered around The Met, kids found the original artifact in IRL, and replicated it in AR. Like magic, 5,000 years of art transformed from real to Roblox virtual items. Kids created their own personal avatars that became walking pieces of art history. Taking each Replica beyond the physical walls of The Met and into Roblox–living on– and inspiring art education in perpetuity throughout the Roblox metaverse.

Additionally, The Met, built in 1870, like many art museums, is built like a fortress with stone walls that make getting cell signal in every corner of the museum a challenge. Our production partner, Unit 9, placed a series of Bluetooth beacons throughout the museum that worked as homing devices to guide children to artifacts that could replicate to Roblox items. This helped overcome the challenge of image recognition in the app when scanning objects in AR, due to inconsistent natural lighting conditions. We tested this process repeatedly over the course of several months with children of varying ages and heights to ensure that the app scanned properly.

Families across the Tri-State area came to The Met to experience Replica and learn about art in a whole new way. Typical time spent for young museumgoers tripled, as kids raced to collect as many Replicas as they could within one visit. Many returned to collect them all. Children love the experience so much, The Met has chosen to continue the exhibit indefinitely.

With zero paid media:

Drove a 35% increase in foot traffic

Over 200,000 new Met visitors

426, 0000 Replica’s collected

1.4 billion impressions