“This one takes a bit more effort,” said Lorna Hogger, energetically spinning a wheel to slowly lift rubber balls into a rollercoaster network of metal tubes high in the air. They whiz round and thud out and a lesson is learned about how complicated things are often simpler than they seem.
Elsewhere there is a wind tunnel, a create-your-own hydrogen rocket, fun with marbles, and the chance to see how much better and brilliant everyone looks when filmed with an infrared camera.
The interactive exhibits are part of a new £6m gallery opening on Thursday at the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York.
Housed in a former railway workshop where engines such as the Flying Scotsman would have been maintained, Wonderlab is one of the year’s biggest gallery openings outside London.
In development since 2018 and delayed by the pandemic, the new gallery is a significant moment in the NRM’s 48-year history, said the museum director, Judith McNicol.
“I came in at the weekend and just stopped and looked round and, yes, I got a little bit teary,” she said at a preview on Tuesday. “We have achieved something quite special.”
There are Wonderlabs at the Science Museum in London and the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. York’s is different in that it is aimed squarely at engineering.
One aim is to inspire the engineers of the future, with the railway engineering sector in particular facing a critical skills shortage.
McNicol said the gallery was about having fun, but also about encouraging children to use their imagination to solve problems.
“If you look round, there are very few of the interactives where you do something and you only get one outcome,” she said. “There is often no one answer. It is all about creativity.
“We’ve tried to find a way of having interactives which help young people think like an engineer. We’ve worked with rail engineers to examine what are the challenges that the industry is facing.”
The 1,500 sq metre gallery has 18 interactive exhibits and is aimed at seven- to 14-year-olds, although the museum expects big kids – parents – to get involved as well.
“We do a lot of corporate events,” said McNicol. “Imagine having an evening of team building in here.”
Adults, if they could get past the children, would undoubtedly enjoy Pippa Hale’s Play Revolution exhibition, one of two artist commissions. Hale has her own room, filled with large colourful foam shapes inspired by the museum’s archives, which can be made into structures such as bridges and towers.
The second commission is from Steve Messam, who has installed a show-stopping red inflatable sculpture titled Mass. Built by a hot air balloon company and measuring 12 x 16 metres, Messam has created an inflatable that goes down into engineering pits and up to the ceiling.
Visitors can walk though it and see inside. “You can see that there is nothing holding it up,” said Messam. “The whole thing is just air. There are no moving parts, it just exists.”
Messam said it was the first time he had been in the gallery without there being dust everywhere and having to wear a hard hat. “It is really nice to see the whole thing come together. We didn’t know that it was going to fit until it was installed … it has to fit perfectly.
“It is 100 cubic metres of air and that is it. The shape isn’t representative of anything, it is about exploring the space.”
The Wonderlab has been designed by architects De Matos Ryan, which also worked on the newly reopened Young V&A in London. The main funder is the Liz and Terry Bramall Foundation, which has provided £2.5m.
As well as art and interactives there will be live science shows and demonstrations in the gallery, including how explosions can be created and controlled to make an engine work.
McNicol said: “We want to ensure that children have great fun while developing a spark of interest in engineering that will contribute towards tackling the UK’s shortage in Stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] skills.”
Wonderlab: the Bramall Gallery opens in York on Thursday.
