The Wellcome Trust is awarding £1.9m to the Eden Project in Cornwall to create a permanent, immersive exhibition revealing the inextricable links between the health of humanity and the planet we inhabit.

This significant investment from Wellcome’s Capital Awards scheme will support the creation of ‘Invisible Worlds’ featuring ten new exhibits exploring our relationship to the world around and inside us, from microbiology to the trends affecting our future.   

The vast majority of life on earth - 90 per cent - is microscopic. Humans, and the plants and animals we see each day, are the exceptions. The processes that sustain life take place over times and at scales impossible for us to experience.

Gus Grand, Head of Policy at the Eden Project, said: ’Most museums, zoos and botanic gardens were set up in the Victorian period, when our understanding of the world and our place within it was very different to what it is now.  Invisible Worlds is an exhibition for our time, and we’re delighted that this award from Wellcome will enable us to transform the Eden Project, to explore the world that we now know lies beyond our senses.’

Invisible Worlds will open in spring 2018.