- The National Science and Media Museum will reopen on 8 January with an exciting public programme and revamped spaces, following a once-in-a-generation transformation as Bradford becomes UK City of Culture.
- The reopening will be celebrated on Saturday 11 January with A Grand Day Out; this special partnership with Aardman includes screenings of Wallace & Gromit, model making workshops and more.
- A new temporary exhibition David Hockney: Pieced Together opens on 15 January, showcasing the artist’s pioneering use of film and photography.
- The museum’s IMAX screen will reopen from Friday 20 December with screenings of Mufasa: The Lion King.
The National Science and Media Museum will reopen to visitors on 8 January 2025 with an exciting public programme and newly renovated foyer space, as well as returning favourites such as interactive gallery Wonderlab and the Kodak photography gallery, alongside Yorkshire’s biggest independent cinema.
Ahead of the full reopening, the museum’s IMAX screen will welcome audiences back from 20 December 2024, with screenings of Mufasa: The Lion King across the festive period.
The museum temporarily closed in June last year to undergo a once-in-a-generation transformation with huge changes through a £6 million capital project called ‘Sound and Vision’, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, the museum will have two new permanent galleries, a new passenger lift and improvements to the main entrance.
The museum will celebrate its reopening weekend with a special partnership with Aardman, featuring film screenings, model making workshops and more. The museum’s team of Explainers will also be delivering free family-friendly activities with live science shows and object handling.
Visitors will be welcomed back into the museum’s brand-new foyer space, which has been updated to provide a more flexible and welcoming space for visitors and local communities to enjoy. The new foyer includes soft seating, a redesigned shop and the popular Media Café, as well as the installation of an additional passenger lift, allowing more visitors to move around the building with ease.
The museum will also open a new temporary exhibition, David Hockney: Pieced Together, on 15 January. The exhibition showcases Hockney’s video installation capturing Woldgate Woods in the Yorkshire countryside through the four seasons, with each screen showing a different perspective of the country lane. The exhibition also explores the artistic and technical parallels of Hockney’s early ‘joiner’ photocollages, two of which are part of the museum’s collection. One of the joiners on display shows the museum in its early days as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in 1985.
Commenting the museum’s reopening, Jo Quinton-Tulloch, Director of the National Science and Media Museum said: “We are delighted to be reopening the museum on 8 January and can’t wait to welcome visitors back into the building. With newly transformed spaces, improved accessibility and exciting additions to our public programme, it marks the beginning of an extraordinary journey for both the museum and our community. As the year unfolds, we will unveil more exciting improvements to the museum, culminating in the summer with the launch of our spectacular Sound and Vision galleries. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be reopening the museum with the backdrop of an amazing Bradford 2025 programme, making this a once-in-a-lifetime moment.”
Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund added: “It is incredibly exciting that audiences will be welcomed back into the National Science and Media Museum in January as their doors reopen. In 1995, the museum was one of the first transformational projects in Yorkshire that received funding from the Heritage Fund, and after 30 years we have supported the museum again with the new Sound and Vision Galleries. Showcasing key objects and stories from the museums world-class collection, the new galleries are due to open later in the year, ensuring that the museum will be a star attraction of Bradford City of Culture 2025.”
The early 2025 programme will also see the return of the museum’s annual Yorkshire Games Festival, taking place from 10–23 February, including half-term activities for all the family. The festival’s industry-led Game Talks will also take place across 12 and 13 February, featuring a unique programme of talks and workshops from talented videogame developers.
As part of the museum’s regeneration project, vintage arcade Games Lounge has been relocated and transformed into Power Up. Opening in March, Power Up is still the hands-on gaming experience that has grown to be a visitor favourite, but it provides a refreshed offer designed to engage visitors of all ages. It will include a BAFTA Young Game Designers section, where visitors are invited to play previous winners’ titles and learn about the next generation of game design, as well as an opportunity to discover more about the history of the arcade.
As part of the museum’s 2025 public programme, a new interactive and immersive installation by experiential artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast in partnership with Bradford 2025 will open in April 2025. The installation will take visitors on a multimedia ride through time and space, exploring who we are and what makes us human. With Bradford running through its DNA, the experience has been inspired by Born in Bradford, a major research programme that has been tracking the lives of more than 40,000 people across the district since 2007.
The museum’s new Sound and Vision galleries will open in summer 2025, featuring permanent displays of the museum’s world-class collections of photography, film, television, gaming and sound technologies. The new galleries will take visitors on a journey through the explosion of media technologies, and their impact on our lives.
The Sound and Vision Project is a £6m capital investment, and in addition to funding received from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project also has support from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, Bradford Council and the Science Museum Group, which the National Science and Media Museum is a part of.
For more information, please visit our website.
For film times and to book tickets, please visit our cinema pages.
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For more information, images or interviews, please contact: Brittany Noppe, Communications Manager, brittany.noppe@scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk / (0)1274 203356
A media pack of images is available to download here.
The Sound and Vision Project is generously supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players, City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (Associate Funder), DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund (Associate Funder), Art Fund (Supported By) Sovereign Health Care (Supported By), David Family Foundation (Supported By) and Spectacle Makers Charity (Supported By).
About the National Science and Media Museum
The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, opened in 1983, and has since become one of the most visited UK museums outside London. It draws on more than three million objects from its national collection to explore the science and culture of image and sound technologies, and their impact on our lives.
The museum creates special exhibitions, interactive galleries and activities for families and adults, and is home to Pictureville, Yorkshire’s biggest independent cinema with three screens including Europe’s first IMAX and the one of two public Cinerama venues in the world.
Please note, the museum remains temporarily closed to the public until 8 January 2025. For more information and updates on reopening, please visit our website.
About the National Lottery Heritage Fund
As the largest dedicated funder of the UK’s heritage, The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033.
Over the next ten years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to bring about benefits for people, places and the natural environment.
We help protect, transform and share the things from the past that people care about, from popular museums and historic places, our natural environment and fragile species, to the languages and cultural traditions that celebrate who we are.
We are passionate about heritage and committed to driving innovation and collaboration to make a positive difference to people’s lives today, while leaving a lasting legacy for future generations to enjoy.
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLottery #HeritageFund
About the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund
The DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund provides capital funding for museums and galleries across England to improve displays, protect collections and make exhibitions more accessible to visitors. In 2022-24, DCMS and the Wolfson Foundation each contributed £2 million to the Fund, which has benefitted more than 300 projects in its 20-year history.
Thanks to National Lottery players
