The family-friendly programme for this year’s Manchester Science Festival has been unveiled. The 11 day science extravaganza is packed with events, including a robot playground, family rave and a wild dinosaur experience.
This year’s festival runs from Thursday, 19 October to Sunday, 29 October and features more than 100 events at venues across Greater Manchester including Rochdale, Oldham, Stockport and Bolton as well as the city centre.
Headlining the Manchester Science Festival at the Museum of Science and Industry, will be the blockbuster exhibition Robots which explores the quest to recreate humans in robotic form. Smaller robot fans can also explore the themed activities at the Robots Playground featuring Miro the RoboDog, Nao the dancing robot and a host of other metallic friends.
Also headlining the Manchester Science Festival is Tape, by award-winning artists Numen/For Use. They are transforming the 1830 Warehouse at the Museum of Science and Industry into a giant spider’s web made from sticky tape. Visitors can climb through a translucent “stretched biomorphic skin” strung above the ground and crawl along winding networks of cocooning passageways.
Other events at the Museum of Science and Industry include Scribble Bots, Human vs Machine and Lego Space Rovers. Plus two fantastic immersive smartphone adventures featuring Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr, The Lost Program and Reporting For Duty.
Further afield, visit the #CitizenScience Showcase to find out how people just like you are helping to make world-changing discoveries or experience the AquAIRium, a “dry aquarium” that brings every sound, scent and surface of the ocean to life. Puzzles, problem-solving and PlayStations: it’s all about experimental gaming at GameLab where for good measure, they’ll also take your mutt’s mugshot portrait using the latest camera technology. All three events are held at the MediaCityUK campus of the festival’s lead educational sponsor, the University of Salford.
Sing along to the A-Z of science with the Ensonglopedia of Science or discover the weird things the human voice can do at Electrifying the Voice. Music-lovers can enjoy science raps at the Hip Hop Science Stop Weekender. Experiments get excitingly explosive at Quantum of Science, while things that rain down from the sky is the subject of Meteorites and Fireballs.
Enjoy a creepie crawly boogie woogie at Big Fish Little Fish’s family rave. Encounter some Dinosaurs in the Wild and get hands on with the archives (and some Lego robots) in Science at Central.
There’s yet more hands-on fun at A Grand Exposition. A four-day celebration of the region’s diverse community of artists, makers and creative technologists, and The Science Studio. Visitors can get up close and personal with the chemicals, reactions and elements artists use in their art. The young coders of Manchester can test their hacking skills at HackManchester Junior; plus TV astronomer Mark Thompson will explore the magical properties of matter with exploding elephant’s toothpaste and vortex generating dustbins in Mark Thompson’s Spectacular Science Show.
The popular Pi: Platform for Investigation returns with daily events at the Museum of Science and Industry; featuring the real-life amazing researchers investigating subjects including flooding, dementia and killer fungi.