At-Bristol’s The Tinkering Space opens 23 July – what will you make of it?
Tuesday 5 July | Jen Forster
At-Bristol, an educational charity and one of the UK’s leading interactive science centres, is opening a brand new exhibition this summer - The Tinkering Space! Aimed to inspire the inventor in us all, The Tinkering Space is for creators, inventors, dreamers and anyone who’ve ever wanted to have a go at making something. The Tinkering Space enables visitors to turn their ideas into something they can touch, design and modify, and even rebuild elements of the space itself.
Opening on 23 July, the permanent exhibition will include a ‘Baxter’ robot (the first in a UK science centre), two 3D printers, an air table for testing flying devices, Shadow Theatres, make-your-own ball runs, and more. The space will be open all day every day, and will include some guided activities with the Live Science Team and Education Team, which will run for visitors and school groups.
Tapping into the growing ‘maker’ movement, The Tinkering Space is the latest in a growing portfolio of new exhibitions and programming spaces designed and developed by At-Bristol’s in-house Exhibitions and Learning teams. For this project, At-Bristol are delighted to have been able to collaborate with the Bristol-based making space KWMC: The Factory, run by arts organisation and charity Knowle West Media Centre, for the build of key parts of furniture and exhibit housing for the space. The Tinkering Space will focus on visitor generated content, with the exhibition changing form as visitors make and create their inventions.
At-Bristol will be celebrating the launch of The Tinkering Space with a series of ‘Robot Encounters’ activities across the venue throughout the summer, which will include; meeting the larger-than-life Baxter and pint-sized ‘Nao’ robots, a swarm of ‘Thymio’ robots, getting to grips with 3D printed bionic hands in Superhuman Lab, and taking part in the ‘The Nearly Not Quite Impossible Luminous Robot Circus’ family show, a visually spectacular show with a cast of robot performers.
Anna Starkey, At-Bristol’s Creative Director said:
“Bristol is an incredible city full of creative makers and thinkers and The Tinkering Space has grown from that energy - it’s a ‘what if..’ kind of a space, where we welcome everyone to unleash that very human instinct to lift the lid, poke around inside the box, pull apart and create. The Tinkering Space occupies a zone of thinking and doing at the intersection of art, design, technology and science - and that’s where new ideas can emerge, whether it’s your first time making something or you’re a lifelong inventor.
Connecting this with the launch of our Robot Encounters programme provides a fascinating context for people to get curious about how things are made, designed and built, and to discover how we all have a part to play in designing the future.”
At-Bristol is an educational charity, so exhibitions like this are not possible without generous funding from sponsors and contributors, and in this case: The DS Smith Charitable Foundation, Leonardo and BOTT.
The Tinkering Space opens to the public on Saturday 23 July; The Tinkering Space and all Robot Encounters activities are included in general entry tickets to At-Bristol. At-Bristol is open 10-6 during summer holidays, for more information, please visit www.at-bristol.org.uk
-ENDS-
Behind the Scenes tours of The Tinkering Space are available for press in advance of 23 July, please contact Jen Forster – PR Manager, on 0117 9157 152/07967 334 152 or jen.forster@at-bristol.org.uk.
Image credit: Bristol 24/7