My senses were immediately aroused as I walked up to Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (Mosi). Engulfed by a cloud of smoke from a passing steam train, beam engines whooshed beside me emanating a hot oily smell.
Yet if I thought I had been transported into the past, I only had to walk a few paces into Mosi’s new gallery to come face-to-face with 21st-century technology at its finest.
Behind-the-scenes, it’s been a year of big changes for Mosi, as a merger with the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) group saw previous director Tony Hill step down in December 2011. He was replaced in February by Jean Franczyk, who moved from her post as director of learning at the NMSI.
Politics aside, last year saw the unveiling of a £9m upgrade in the form of Revolution Manchester, a multimedia gallery showcasing the city’s greatest innovations and offering a gateway to the rest of the collections across its 7.5 acre site.
The redevelopment, housed inside the Grade II-listed Great Western Warehouse, also includes a revamped gift shop, new restaurant and coffee shop, dedicated suites for education and conferences, as well as an improved Experiment!, Mosi’s hands-on science gallery.
Visitor figures to Mosi have soared since Revolution Manchester opened and are projected to exceed one million this year, up from 638,000 during 2010-11. During my visit in February half term, the museum was teeming with people of all ages, suggesting these anticipated figures will be reached.
Digital savvy
As I entered Revolution Manchester, I was greeted with a friendly welcome and handed a barcode card that I was encouraged to register on one of the many touchscreen computers located in the entrance hall. The card can be used to activate a series of challenges around the gallery, as well as unlocking a personal webpage at home.
However, its most impressive feature sees your photograph become part of a 30ft-high digital chandelier that depicts the city’s scientific and technological revolutions from 1781 to today.
This artwork truly brings history home, allowing you to feel part of the continuing revolution, with your face placed among Manchester-based people and objects that have shaped the modern world.
Visitors enter the main part of the gallery after passing the largest LCD wall in the UK, which scrolls through more Mancunian innovations. The bright and spacious gallery is divided into six sections, (Transport Revolutions, Computer Age, Engineering, Energy, Cottonopolis and Structure of Matter), with interpretation clustered around key objects that support the themes explored.
I was most impressed by the bold and informative text panels, which also appear at varying heights to engage with all ages. The transport section even has a tactile Victorian train at child height, explaining how a steam locomotive works, while directly above, adults can watch a video about the Rainhill Trials, an 1829 competition to test locomotives.
Promoting Manchester
All the historical items are complemented by related modern innovations, highlighting Manchester’s continued advancements in science and technology.
Also, for younger minds, complex past developments are contextualised with items more familiar in their daily lives. For example, interpretation for Baby, the world’s first stored program computer, is read from an iPad, 10,000 times faster than its 1948 predecessor.
There is no set route round the Revolution Manchester Gallery, but the large space and colour-coded sections allow for a leisurely exploration.
As a visitor to Manchester, I appreciated the local links throughout Mosi. Upstairs from the Revolution Manchester Gallery is the Manchester Science Gallery, which uses popular media and international events to tell the stories of the city’s scientists and the significance of their work.
By constantly putting Greater Manchester’s scientific and technological breakthroughs into a global context, Mosi reveals as much about the people and entrepreneurial ethos of the area as it does about the materials that they produced.
This point is often made with the museum’s tongue firmly inside its mechanical cheek. I thoroughly enjoyed a temporary exhibition about Baxenden-based Holland’s Pies and how technological advancements have shaped the business over 160 years.
A photo opportunity with a larger than life meat and potato pudding was not something I could turn down. I hope Mosi will be able to keep this colloquial flavour now it is part of NMSI.
The other notable alteration following the recent redevelopment is the upgraded Experiment! gallery, featuring hands-on activities such as the Bin it Boogie dance game and the ever-popular Mini car, which can be lifted with the turn of a winch.
This gallery was alive with energy and colour, and there’s enough on offer to keep children – and the young at heart – immersed for hours on end.
Of course, these interactive galleries are 10 a penny in science centres today, but the sheer scale of Mosi’s Experiment! ensures that even during busy periods there is always an activity free and everything was working, too.
New era
The major drawback to Revolution Manchester, and the redevelopment of the Great Western Warehouse, is that the rest of Mosi’s sprawling site looks very dated by comparison.
Some text panels have been scratched away, information is obsolete in places and signage is confusing. Some galleries were closed completely, with little explanation as to why. The innovative bar-code card is not utilised outside the Revolution Manchester gallery, which seems like a missed opportunity given the money spent on setting up the system.
Still, the five listed buildings which house the museum’s 16 permanent galleries are impressive to look at and I took pleasure in texting my friends while standing on the platform of Liverpool Road railway station, the Manchester terminus of the world’s first passenger railway.
There were some nice, if almost hidden touches, including images in front of various trees to show what objects their wood was made into during the industrial revolution.
This is the start of a new era for Mosi. After a £15m Heritage Lottery Fund bid was rejected in 2008, the museum decided to take a piecemeal approach to the site’s redevelopment.
Next on the list is to turn the Electricity and Gas galleries into a suite of Energy Galleries, followed by a revamp of the Air & Space Gallery and a proposed Land Transport Gallery.
Like its London-based “brother”, the Science Museum, you can’t explore Mosi properly in one day. If the rest of the site is renovated by the NMSI to the impeccable standard set by Revolution Manchester, then this is a museum that I will be returning to again and again.
Ben Goodwin is a marketing assistant at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
Yet if I thought I had been transported into the past, I only had to walk a few paces into Mosi’s new gallery to come face-to-face with 21st-century technology at its finest.
Behind-the-scenes, it’s been a year of big changes for Mosi, as a merger with the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) group saw previous director Tony Hill step down in December 2011. He was replaced in February by Jean Franczyk, who moved from her post as director of learning at the NMSI.
Politics aside, last year saw the unveiling of a £9m upgrade in the form of Revolution Manchester, a multimedia gallery showcasing the city’s greatest innovations and offering a gateway to the rest of the collections across its 7.5 acre site.
The redevelopment, housed inside the Grade II-listed Great Western Warehouse, also includes a revamped gift shop, new restaurant and coffee shop, dedicated suites for education and conferences, as well as an improved Experiment!, Mosi’s hands-on science gallery.
Visitor figures to Mosi have soared since Revolution Manchester opened and are projected to exceed one million this year, up from 638,000 during 2010-11. During my visit in February half term, the museum was teeming with people of all ages, suggesting these anticipated figures will be reached.
Digital savvy
As I entered Revolution Manchester, I was greeted with a friendly welcome and handed a barcode card that I was encouraged to register on one of the many touchscreen computers located in the entrance hall. The card can be used to activate a series of challenges around the gallery, as well as unlocking a personal webpage at home.
However, its most impressive feature sees your photograph become part of a 30ft-high digital chandelier that depicts the city’s scientific and technological revolutions from 1781 to today.
This artwork truly brings history home, allowing you to feel part of the continuing revolution, with your face placed among Manchester-based people and objects that have shaped the modern world.
Visitors enter the main part of the gallery after passing the largest LCD wall in the UK, which scrolls through more Mancunian innovations. The bright and spacious gallery is divided into six sections, (Transport Revolutions, Computer Age, Engineering, Energy, Cottonopolis and Structure of Matter), with interpretation clustered around key objects that support the themes explored.
I was most impressed by the bold and informative text panels, which also appear at varying heights to engage with all ages. The transport section even has a tactile Victorian train at child height, explaining how a steam locomotive works, while directly above, adults can watch a video about the Rainhill Trials, an 1829 competition to test locomotives.
Promoting Manchester
All the historical items are complemented by related modern innovations, highlighting Manchester’s continued advancements in science and technology.
Also, for younger minds, complex past developments are contextualised with items more familiar in their daily lives. For example, interpretation for Baby, the world’s first stored program computer, is read from an iPad, 10,000 times faster than its 1948 predecessor.
There is no set route round the Revolution Manchester Gallery, but the large space and colour-coded sections allow for a leisurely exploration.
As a visitor to Manchester, I appreciated the local links throughout Mosi. Upstairs from the Revolution Manchester Gallery is the Manchester Science Gallery, which uses popular media and international events to tell the stories of the city’s scientists and the significance of their work.
By constantly putting Greater Manchester’s scientific and technological breakthroughs into a global context, Mosi reveals as much about the people and entrepreneurial ethos of the area as it does about the materials that they produced.
This point is often made with the museum’s tongue firmly inside its mechanical cheek. I thoroughly enjoyed a temporary exhibition about Baxenden-based Holland’s Pies and how technological advancements have shaped the business over 160 years.
A photo opportunity with a larger than life meat and potato pudding was not something I could turn down. I hope Mosi will be able to keep this colloquial flavour now it is part of NMSI.
The other notable alteration following the recent redevelopment is the upgraded Experiment! gallery, featuring hands-on activities such as the Bin it Boogie dance game and the ever-popular Mini car, which can be lifted with the turn of a winch.
This gallery was alive with energy and colour, and there’s enough on offer to keep children – and the young at heart – immersed for hours on end.
Of course, these interactive galleries are 10 a penny in science centres today, but the sheer scale of Mosi’s Experiment! ensures that even during busy periods there is always an activity free and everything was working, too.
New era
The major drawback to Revolution Manchester, and the redevelopment of the Great Western Warehouse, is that the rest of Mosi’s sprawling site looks very dated by comparison.
Some text panels have been scratched away, information is obsolete in places and signage is confusing. Some galleries were closed completely, with little explanation as to why. The innovative bar-code card is not utilised outside the Revolution Manchester gallery, which seems like a missed opportunity given the money spent on setting up the system.
Still, the five listed buildings which house the museum’s 16 permanent galleries are impressive to look at and I took pleasure in texting my friends while standing on the platform of Liverpool Road railway station, the Manchester terminus of the world’s first passenger railway.
There were some nice, if almost hidden touches, including images in front of various trees to show what objects their wood was made into during the industrial revolution.
This is the start of a new era for Mosi. After a £15m Heritage Lottery Fund bid was rejected in 2008, the museum decided to take a piecemeal approach to the site’s redevelopment.
Next on the list is to turn the Electricity and Gas galleries into a suite of Energy Galleries, followed by a revamp of the Air & Space Gallery and a proposed Land Transport Gallery.
Like its London-based “brother”, the Science Museum, you can’t explore Mosi properly in one day. If the rest of the site is renovated by the NMSI to the impeccable standard set by Revolution Manchester, then this is a museum that I will be returning to again and again.
Ben Goodwin is a marketing assistant at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
Project data
- Cost £9m (Great Western Warehouse redevelopment including Revolution Manchester)
- Main funders European Regional Development Fund; Northwest Regional Development Agency; Department for Culture, Media and Sport; Garfield Weston Foundation; SITA Trust
- Architects Buttress Fuller Alsop Williams
- Main contractor John Turner & Sons
- Exhibition design and fit-out Kin Design and 24 Design
- Structural engineer Gifford
- Project management Drivers Jonas Deloitte
