From super-sized exhibitions and time-hopping video game thrills to revolutionary objects and stories that shaped the world we live in today, the Science and Industry Museum hosts a fun-filled spring programme of interactive entertainment to captivate and inspire visitors of all ages.
Open Saturdays and Sundays during term time and daily during school holidays, the ‘ultimate hands-on gaming experience’ Power Up offers kids and grown-ups alike the chance to try out over 150 different video game consoles, loaded with some of the best titles from across fifty years of digital evolution.
Face off across the generations with nostalgic favourites like Pac-Man, Atari and Street Fighter, before leaping forward in time to the present day to play on PS5s and virtual reality systems. There’s even a selection of rare throwback consoles, including the original Philips CD-I, 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Amiga CD32 and Neo Geo CD.
Book your pass below.
The museum also boasts a dazzling variety of free interactive galleries and fascinating objects.
Revolution Manchester
The Revolution Manchester gallery showcases our city’s rich legacy of industrial innovations, scientific discoveries and ideas that started life in Manchester and went on to change the world.
Get up close with a working replica of The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, nicknamed Baby, which was the first ever computer to store and run a program from memory in 1948. The original no longer exists, so the museum’s incredible reproduction provides the only opportunity to see a pivotal piece of computing history in the heart of its home city.
History-lovers and motoring enthusiasts can marvel at Manchester’s Rolls-Royce, one of only three remaining cars of its type and an integral part of the city’s industrial heritage, having once belonged to Henry Royce himself.
Explore our city’s role in the country’s creative industries. From experimental broadcasters to trailblazing musicians, discover how Manchester has influenced how we share ideas and express ourselves.
Textiles Gallery
Experience the thunderous sounds of industry with family-friendly demonstrations of working life in Manchester’s bustling cotton mills in the Textiles Gallery.
Meet the machines, people and stories that made Manchester the first industrial city and the continuing legacy in our city and the world today.
Pick up a free activity trail to explore the gallery with fun games and challenges, build a textiles tower or try your hand at weaving.
Experiment
In Experiment, visitors can discover more mesmerising science with an assortment of hands-on activities in which you can see through walls, make music with your body, create glow-in-the-dark art and use a thermal camera to view the world in heat vision.
Find out more about what’s on around the Science and Industry Museum below.
The Science and Industry Museum, Liverpool Rd, Manchester, M3 4FP
www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk
- Words:
- Wolf McFarlane
- Published on:
- Wed 30 Apr 2025
Fresh from a sold-out February half-term, the new major exhibition Operation Ouch! Brains, Bogies and You promises a sense-sational spring adventure for budding young scientists.
Enter Dr. Chris’ colossal cranium and explore the remarkable ways our brains process the world, with a series of rooms dedicated to each of the five senses, as well as lesser-known ‘secret senses’ that maintain balance, regulate sleep and more. Journey through a gleefully gross and gooey ear canal, squeeze past sticky snot and test your own sensory skills before being sneezed out of a giant nose.
Book tickets below.