Seasonal celebrations and “sense-ational” fun arrive at the Science and Industry Museum this December

MCRJourno

The Science and Industry Museum is launching a full season of winter activities, special events and family fun from 20th December until 4th January including the final chance to see its hit exhibition Operation Ouch! Brains, Bogies and You before it closes.

More than 78,000 visitors have experienced the exhibition since it opened in February, making it one of the museum’s most popular family shows.

Inspired by the BBC Children’s and Education series Operation Ouch!, the exhibition lets visitors explore the human senses through a series of immersive, interactive spaces, from squeezing through an ear canal to being “sneezed” out of a giant nose.

Guests with a child ticket in December can also collect a free gift from the exhibition shop while supplies last. To mark the exhibition’s final weeks, the museum will host free activities examining how the brain processes sight and sound.

From 20th December to 4th January visitors can take part in hands-on challenges led by the museum’s Explainers, exploring optical and audio illusions that confuse the senses.

Families eager to visit earlier can attend a special event on 23rd November when Dr. Chris, one of the presenters of Operation Ouch! and a contributor to the exhibition, returns to the museum to host a Mini Medics Sensory Challenge.

Winter holiday celebrations will run alongside these activities with a focus on light, shadow and illumination. Visitors can experiment with how shadows form, draw friends and family at a Silhouette Station, or play among colourful projected skylines.

Guests can also explore the newly reopened Power Hall: The Andrew Law Gallery. The gallery houses historic locomotives and working engines that shaped Manchester’s industrial past and inspired generations of model railways found under Christmas trees.

In addition to winter programming and exhibitions, the museum’s free galleries remain open in December. These include the interactive Experiment gallery, the historic Textiles Gallery with working mill machinery, and Revolution Manchester.