“What does the future hold for humanity?” That’s the million dollar question that the Manchester Science Festival will try to answer over the next ten days, as the biennial festival - the first live event in four years - opens its doors at the Science and Industry Museum.
This year’s event takes place from Friday, October 21 to Sunday, October 30, and will celebrate science through immersive exhibitions, interactive activities and after-hours events. Earlier today, we took a look at two of its headline exhibitions including Turn It Up: The power of music - a multi-sensory experience inviting visitors to uncover the science and mystery of music, and Giant Leaps - which sees choreographer Corey Baker create the first dance in space.
Taking the Manchester Evening News on a tour of the Turn it Up exhibition, Ella Wild, Head of Festivals and Events told us: “The Science Festival is back after four years and we’re incredibly excited to be back right here at the museum. We’ve got ten days of interactive, hands-on activities for families and people across Greater Manchester and the UK - please come down and get involved.
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“We've got our family zones with partners like the University of Salford and Amazon and they will be showing pioneering technology all about the future of humanity and what the future has in store for us all, from technology through to sustainability - so how can we be better in the way we shop and robots."
For those who want to check out Turn It Up: The power of music you’re certainly in for a treat. Exploring music’s mysterious hold over us and how it drives us to create, perform, feel and share, the exhibition not only houses old gramophones, radios and iPod sent in by the public, but there’s also the chance to check out more unusual inventions, and create your own music at the light show installation.
“We did a call out and asked people to send in their musical memories from their grandfathers to their own, and it’s also about what they can remember from their childhood,” explains Ella. “It’s really an introduction into what music means to all of us - we’re all musicians in our own way and it’s about encouraging that playful side.”
The exhibition also explores why certain music can make us feel different emotions and how it might influence what we buy, as well as its mood-boosting qualities. While the rest of the festival will run for ten days, Turn It Up will run until May 2023 before going on a world tour.
Corey Baker’s Giant Leaps exhibition, meanwhile, will delight both adults and children and he seeks to create the first dance in space with an out-of-this-world experience where visitors can float through the cosmos while they dance, move and shake as they're tracked to create digital stars and space dust.
“We’re really excited to have our premiere installation by Corey who is a leading choreographer and has done amazing work across the world. For the festival, he’s worked with Brightside Studios to put together Giant Leaps which is about the future of space and exploring it, but also a dance experience where visitors can get really involved and hopefully throw some shapes.”
Set against an immersive backdrop of our galaxies, this interactive experience will also encourage visitors to view earth from a different perspective, appreciating its vulnerability and the need for humans to work together creatively to protect it.
Other highlights of the festival will include nocturnal nature tours, the chance to meet people working in STEM careers and a wealth of futuristic fun over the festival’s hub at the museum’s 1830 Warehouse. Families will be able to take home their own saplings as City of Trees show the role that trees play in helping to reduce the effects of climate change, and can speak to the Lancashire Wildlife Trust to learn about how to keep nature in their neighbourhoods.
After-hours, adults-only events will include the Future of Sex, an evening dedicated to understanding the relationship between technology, education and sex. As part of the experience, there will be workshops where you can make gynaecological bunting, while VR dating app Flirtual will host Virtual Reality dates.
Over on Castlefield Viaduct, the National Trust will host Sky Park After Dark, a nocturnal nature tour of the viaduct, and visitors can also take part in a get Curious events, where people working in STEM will explore the innovations changing our world, with a focus on artificial intelligence.
Tickets for Manchester Science Festival, including Turn It Up: The power of music, can be booked online here .
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