Natural History Museum in half term? Are you mad? Well not if you are going to the Darwin centre. It was opened in September and we were itching to go there. Matty booked tickets (you have to book) but it is Free! It seemed like an over the top piece of bureaucracy at the time but as it turned out it was well worth the printer ink.
Arriving at lunchtime the queue to get into the museum was at least 1000 people long – our hearts sank as we had only fifteen minutes to get to the Cocoon for our allocated time slot. We tentatively proffered our printed out ticket to the Darwin Centre and were promptly marched to the entrance like VIPs – saving a good half hour wait to get int0 the museum – result!
Thankfully our kids no longer hanker after the trudge around the dinosaurs and we passed another queuing throng to go up to the Darwin Centre. You arrive at a lift that takes you up to the top of the Cocoon. There you are welcomed by staff that explain how to use some of the interactive exhibits. You are also given a unique data card that allows you to ‘collect’ data that can be retrieved online later.
The exhibits included static displays, live demonstrations, video, interactive tables, and combinations of all three. One exhibit was a recreation of the preparation needed for an Expedition in the field this used Video and interactive table a Camera – to take you picture and a function to send your ‘expedition post card’ by email. All very cool and engaging.
The point however of all these exhibits was to explain what science is and how science is done. This is what I found incredibly powerful and inspiring. So for instance an Exhibit on taxonomy not only showed how species were categorised but did it by letting you sort incredibly beautiful Butterflies into their Genus by dragging them (images of them) about on an interactive table which in turn interacted with video clips of scientist explaining the way she approached the task. This worked on so many levels.
Fact that 20 million species are housed in the building and that you can see real live Scientists in their natural habitat gave the whole experience a quality that really was greater than the sum of its parts.