Bradford Science Festival Returns This October Half-term

Bradford Science Festival, produced by the National Science and Media Museum, will return to venues across the city over October half term (25th October - 2nd November), with an enhanced programme to celebrate Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture. This year’s festival invites attendees to “step into the future”, with zones across Bradford exploring the future of technology, fashion, climate, sound and food.

Launching in time for the festival, headline exhibition Living Dots: Nature, People and Place will open on 24 October. Created by award winning data visualisation studio Tekja, the exhibition transforms data taken from Born in Bradford research into an immersive and interactive experience. Visitors will be encouraged to take part in the experience, sharing their thoughts on wellbeing and green spaces, with their responses represented in a glowing dot visualisation taking over the gallery space. The patterns created by the dots aim to show the power of simple data to help us understand one another and make positive change in the future.

In the first of the festival zones, Future Tech, visitors can take part in a series of free activities and events. Throughout the week, UK Antarctic Heritage Trust will take visitors on a journey to 1965 Antarctica with 30-minute Virtual Reality (VR) experience A Frozen Night. In Power to Shape Tomorrow, hosted by engineering company Cummins, visitors can explore the latest updates in immersive technologies, such as augmented reality, whilst also learning about clean energy.

The museum will also partner with Impact Gamers to present an interactive drone challenge set in the year 2125, where participants can gain their ‘drone qualification’ and test their skills across tasks ranging from futuristic deliveries to space mining. Meanwhile, the National Physical Laboratory will invite visitors to discover more about metrology - the science of measurement. Families can meet scientists and engineers to learn how and why we measure, find out how standards of measurement are defined, and try their hand at becoming an SI Bots champion stacker.

The museum’s Pictureville Cinema will also host interactive, smartphone powered comedy Robo Bingo, featuring Lloyd and Pete of Foxdog Studios and their robotic bingo mascot, Mr Bing. The event follows a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe and an award-winning run in Adelaide, this time personalised for Bradford to feature an exclusive local picture bingo round featuring famous faces and places around the city.

As part of the programme for 2025, the museum also collaborated with Bowling Park Primary School, exploring the future of exercise and technology in sport through a series of workshops with Year 5 students. As part of this, a short film documenting the project will be screened in the museum from Saturday 25 October.

Elsewhere in the city, The Broadway shopping centre becomes home to the Future Fashion zone, with events including Jeremy Hutchison’s live art piece Dead White Man, a radical performance highlighting the global impact of textile waste. Accompanying the performance, a series of workshops will also take place in The Broadway in which participants can learn more about clothing waste and produce their own miniature recycled clothes ‘zombie’.

The Natural History Museum will also host activities in The Broadway, with festivalgoers invited to discover the wonders of nature by getting up close with real museum specimens. Fast-fashion themed videogame My Favourite T-Shirt, created by NOVARS research centre at the University of Manchester will also be part of the festival. Additional drop-in activities in The Broadway include sewing machine workshops with Stitch Society and hands-on Terrific Textiles activities with 50 Things to Do.

As part of this year’s festival, the museum also formed a dedicated Young People’s Panel to lead their own Future Fashion event. Ten young people from Manningham have been learning about the environmental impact of the fast fashion industry, developing sustainable alternatives in collaboration with local designers and industry partners. Their final pieces will feature as part of a catwalk show in The Broadway on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 October.

Meanwhile, in the Future Food zone at Darley Street Market, festivalgoers will get the chance to taste, learn, and explore the food of tomorrow, showcasing innovations in sustainable ingredients and cooking that could transform how we eat in the years to come. Microbiologists and skin biologists from the University of Bradford will also be exploring the connections between gut, skin and health, showing microbes in action, as well as an interactive stall exploring the science of mouthfeel from the University of Leeds, including a curling-inspired board game.

Royal Institution will also present Explosive Food, a science show featuring demonstrations exploring the energy contained in the food we eat, in addition to University of Nottingham’s Food and Biomaterials research group demonstrating the innovative science behind rice cakes, bringing their rice-popping machine to Darley Street Market.

The Thornbury Centre will host the Future Climate zone, exploring how local action is helping to fight climate change. This includes the opportunity to create your own seagrass seed bag with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust which will later be planted in the Humber Estuary to help bring life back to the Yorkshire coast. Additionally, visitors can play a bespoke climate game created with the local BD3 community, University of Bradford and Impact gamers, exploring how climate action affects people differently.

At SHINE West Bowling, the Future Sounds zone will invite festival attendees to take part in an inclusive, multi-sensory music experience, bringing people together to explore future innovations in sound technology. Royal Society and DMLab will bring their smile powered musical instrument, PhotoSYNTH, to SHINE, inviting all visitors, regardless of musical ability, to create their own unique songs. This zone also includes Virtual Reality (VR) games created by University of Southampton andco-designed with young people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing, helping players explore how sound is experienced, recognised and understood in different environments.

Visitors can also interact with accessible technology created by University of Bradford students, highlighting how gadgets can make everyday life easier for everyone, and explore the science of sound and inclusive music-making with Allstar, in partnership with a wellbeing group at SHINE West Bowling.

Christopher Whitby, Head of Public Programme commented: “We’re thrilled to be bringing back Bradford Science Festival this October with a programme that is bigger and better than ever, during a momentous year for Bradford. This year’s festival looks to the future, exploring cutting-edge technology across tech, fashion, climate, sound, and food. This year’s headline exhibition, Living Dots, is a testament to that, transforming data taken from Born in Bradford research into an interactive experience that helps us imagine and shape the future of our city. As well as in the museum, we will be getting out with activities in The Broadway, Darley Street Market, Thornbury Centre and SHINE West Bowling."

Bradford Science Festival has been made possible thanks to the support of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) (Major Sponsor), Lifelines International (Associate Funder) and Cummins.

For more information and to book your museum admission tickets, head to the National Science and Media Museum website.