The Science and Industry Museum explores the wonder of light and colour this winter

This Christmas season, the Science and Industry Museum invites children and grown-ups alike on a thrilling adventure through light, colour and discovery with an array of exhibitions, installations and activities, as well as a first look at this year’s CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution.

From Sat 16 Dec to Sun 7 Jan, visitors of all ages are welcome to enjoy a free family-friendly programme exploring light and colour, featuring a range of illuminating activities, shows and hands-on entertainment. Guests at the museum can create colours, experiment with reflections and create spellbinding visual tricks in the interactive Light Lab, before embarking on a journey home to Earth from the sun in a captivating science show, where visitors will learn about the ways in which light travels through our atmosphere, discover the scorching science of solar flares and gaze in wonder at real NASA footage of the aurora borealis.

Over in the Recharge Retreat, you can slow things down and settle in with an engaging picture book, or unpack the relationship between colour and mood, as well as the profound impact of nature on our overall health.

Elsewhere, the gleefully gross world premiere blockbuster exhibition Operation Ouch! Food, Poo & You invites visitors on a journey through the human digestive system. Based on the hit BBC Children’s TV series, Operation Ouch! begins at the opening of a super-sized mouth, where visitors will be shrunk, stretched and eventually squeezed through digestive organs, passing by a variety of delightfully disgusting displays and activities which break the taboo around our most repulsive bodily functions. Visitors can explore the peculiarities of puke with Larry the Vomiting Robot, before fighting off bad bacteria in a reaction game and learning more about the process of digestion with the interactive ‘poo-duction’ line.

Open every day during the holiday programme, ‘ultimate gaming experience’ Power Up transports gamers across the generations on a wondrous winter adventure through five decades of iconic video games. Featuring an endless selection of classic titles across over a hundred consoles, Power Up brings parents and children together with a host of digital worlds, from the golden-age arcade nostalgia of Pong, Pac-Man and Sonic to latest-gen physics engines, fresh PlayStation releases and mesmerising VR missions with Astro Bot.

As always, visitors can enjoy the museum’s array of free galleries and exhibitions throughout the day; the interactive Experiment gallery showcases science in action, while the Textiles gallery hosts a selection of mighty machines and breathtakingly intricate mechanisms. In Revolution Manchester, visitors can discover the city’s rich history of world-changing ideas as a crucible of industry, technology and broadcast media, before learning about the incredible life and work of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking through a series of fascinating objects and personal effects from his office, on display in Stephen Hawking at Work.

On Tue 12 Dec, the museum hosts a unique festive science experience with with the return of the CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution. Screened live in the museum’s Revolution Manchester gallery, family audiences will get an exclusive sneak preview of the first of this year’s lectures being filmed ahead of its broadcast on the BBC. Throughout the three lectures, academic, author Mike Woolridge will explore the big questions facing AI research and unravel the myths about how this ground-breaking technology really works.

Tickets for the screening are available here, priced at just £5 for adults and £3 for children and concessions.

For tickets to Operation Ouch! Food, Poo & You (From £9) and Power Up (From £6), as well as free entrance tickets to the Science and Industry Museum, book via the website.

The museum will be closed on 24–26 December 2023 and 1 January 2024.

Check out the full winter holiday programme here.