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Various interactive exhibit projects

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Latest news

December 2007

November 2007

October 2007

September 2007

August 2007

July 2007

June 2007

Attended the ECSITE Conference in Lisbon. Presented talks in seesions entitled, 'Connecting with people' and 'Susatainable science centres'. Chaired another session, 'The outsiders'. Gave talks for several days at the Biodiversity Fair organised by Snowdonia National Park Authority. Many Exploding Custard bookings this month.

May 2007

Assisted astronomers from Mullard Space Science Laboratory with the concept development and design of their display about the sun's extensive 'atmosphere' at this year's Royal Society Summer Science exhibiton. My previous Royal Society project is here. I also presented my Blown-up Biology show about the nature of life and the concept of the cell to three young audiences in at Cork University, Ireland.

April 2007

Production phase of the River Avon travelling exhibition.

March 2007

Desisign phase for a travelling interactive exhibition to change the attitudes of local people towards water conservation in the catchment area of the river Avon in Hampshire.

January/February 2007

Produced an extensive set of mini-interactives for the Centre for Excellence in Learning Science (CELS), Nottingham Trent University.

December 2006

Started on a set of tabletop mini-interactives for Drax power station.

November 2006

Was asked again to set up the temporary exhibition about fruit flies and Alzheimer's disease by the Cambridge University research team that commissioned it last year. They wanted to use it again for a special event at the university. Originally it was for the Royal Society Summer Science event, where it was extremely popular until the London bombings put an early end to the proceedings.

Produced a working model steam turbine electricity generator for Drax power station.

October 2006

A surprisingly busy period for Exploding Custard shows...

September 2006

Collaborating with Centre Screen Productions, work continues on the rather remarkable 'Alchemy' multimedia theatre project at Catalyst, in Widnes. This chemistry-based show includes three large screens, audience-voting, 3d glasses, scrolling panoramas, and a live presenter with a gyro-mouse.It's been fascinating, for example, to work with the computational chemistry department at AstraZeneca to find the best ways to model the interactions between drugs and enymes. There have been many other interesting challenges.

August 2006

Produced a set of mini-interactives for an electricity generating company.

July 2006

Underwater Street opened in Liverpool on 22nd July. It occupies the basement of Liverpool's famous Cunard Building (adjacent to the Liver Building) at the 'Pier Head' Mersey Ferry terminal. The entrance is in Water Street.

Working on this wonderful project has been like a breath of fresh air. Creativity, sensitivity and cost-effectiveness have not been sacrificed to glossy packaging, educational tokenism, committees, meetings, or stifling tenders and contracts.

The development of Underwater Street has been competently and cost-effectively managed, privately, with none of the usual grant funding, by Jeff and Gaynor Wallace, on their kitchen table, with their two children, aged four and seven, as official content-advisors.

Working to a ruthlessly tight 'no-frills' budget, based intuitively on our combined experience of what children like, over 1500 square metres have been fitted-out more rapidly and cost-effectively than any other project I have known.

Opening with no expensive advertising campaign, the public response has been amazingly enthusiastic, feedback is excellent and word-of-mouth recommendation seems to be spreading fast.

The refreshingly simple aim is to promote play. I believe this is entirely adequate and profoundly important. It seems to me that the most effective learning outcome is actually for many grown-ups, to whom the value of play NEEDS to be promoted.

Please come and see...

June 2006

Completed six interactives for Moscow Planetarium, Russia.

May 2006

Delivered five interactives to Sellafield Visitor Centre.

April 2006

Working on interactive exhibits for Sellafield Visitor Centre and Moscow Planetarium.

March 2006

As usual, my busiest time of year for science shows travelling all over Britain. I now have an annual event on stage at the Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would someday become a regular theatre performer...

January - February 2006

A considerable amount of work in collaboration with Centre Screen on a very sophisticated multimedia show with audience-voting, 3d glasses etc. in the special new theatre at the Catalyst science centre in Widnes. I have been advising on the science content and the 'interactivity'. Basically doing what I am best at: thinking like a ten-year-old.

November 2005

The really big occasion for me this month was my Friday Evening Discourse to a frighteningly formal audience of members at the Royal Institution, London. I actually had the honour of presenting my version of Michael Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle lecture.

October 2005

Delivered a talking tree exhibit to the Forestry Commission at Kielder Castle. Each part of the tree 'talks' softly about its biology and its inhabitants. Also delivered a magnetism exhibit to the small science centre at Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington.

September 2005

Several days in Italy, at the Perugia Science Festival. I helped with some science 'busking' in the busy main Piazza and still succeeded in presenting a couple of Exploding Custard shows with all my luggage and equipment temporarily lost by Alitalia Airlines. This was in English, though I accidentally succeeded in cracking a hugely successful Italian joke. Here it is, for any Italian show presenters reading this. I was doing the acidity indicator demo, using the colour-change in a wine-coloured extract of red cabbage. The liquid happened to be in a borrowed wine glass. Knowing that the Italian for cabbage is caviola (because I'd just had to obtain the cabbage), I held up the glass and said CAVIOLATA in my best fake Italian wine-waiter's voice. The gale of laughter startled me and continued for a long time.

August 2005

Spent nearly two weeks as this Summer's guest performer, presenting Exploding Custard shows at the truly wonderful Technorama science centre in Winterthur, Switzerland. Partly in English, partly in German: "Der Explodierende Pudding". Some really excellent photos are here.

July 2005

Successfully installed an interactive exhibition about fruit flies and Alzheimer's disease at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London.

June 2005

Blown-up Biology presentations in Berlin ('Long Night of Science') and Snowdonia. Finished a set of mini-interactives for Kuala Lumpur.

May 2005

Visiting Technorama, Switzerland to reconnoitre a forthcoming series of science shows I'll be performing there shortly. Developing an awesome display about fruit-fly research for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. Preparing to present my Blown-up Biology lecture demonstration in Berlin next month... in German!

April 2005

Working on concept development and interactive exhibit outline specifications for Historic Scotland's new visitor centre at Stanley Mill. Took a visitor from the Moscow Planetarium to see the Space Centre in Leicester and Isaac Newton's nearby birthplace. Designed and produced three pedestal-mounted mini-interactives for Hampshire Museums Service... including a specially beautiful, brass, hands-on flywheel-and-piston model.

March 2005

Supplied a set of 20 flight-cased mini-interactives ('Discovery Disks') to Satrosphere, Aberdeen. Also updated another five older ones that we'd supplied a while earlier. Performed my Exploding Custard show on hallowed ground in the Royal Institution, standing in Michael Faraday's footprints.

February 2005

Designed and produced a set of three 'Biometrics' exhibits for the Hong Kong Science Museum, enabling visitors to examine their own iris, fingerprint and ear-shape.

January 2005

Asked to produce a concept study for a new visitor centre in the Forest of Bowland. I introduced the client to Centre Screen, Manchester, as it was a multimedia-rich project, and we worked on the report together.

December 2004

More Discovery Disk exhibits ordered for a project in Hong Kong and another in Scotland. Began informal concept-development for a privately run children's museum project. Put my annotated, illustrated version of Michael Faraday's 'Chemical History of a Candle' lecture on the website.

November 2004

Attended the ECSITE Conference in Barcelona.

Began work on a set of thirty Discovery Disk exhibits for the new Sci Bono science centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. Also a smaller set for a school in Northampton.

October 2004

Produced a report for Historic Scotland: Stanley Mills: interactive interpretation. There is a lot more more to 'interactivity' than just interactive exhibits. There is more to 'interactivity' than just presenting some interactive exhibits. The modern approach to interactivity is radically different from linear, sequential displays where the visitor is only expected to 'walk through a story'.

There is a more sensitively judged balance, with less of the traditional emphasis on passively absorbed explanation and more emphasis on motivating exploration.

Details and photos of three high-quality exhibits have been added here. Newton's Laws, How a telescope works and Phases of the moon were supplied to the Landesmuseum für Technik und Arbeit, Mannheim, Germany, last May.

Details and photos of eight permanently-mounted Discovery Disks have been added here. These were produced for for the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow last August. Apart from being beautiful pieces of work, they demonstrate the great potential for small-scale exhibits in Discovery Disk format which are either permanently or temporarily fastened down to a table surface.

September 2004

I delivered the second of my three new shows, "The seventh sense", to the Thinktank team in Birmingham. This is mainly based on projected images and participative demos about human and animal senses. It makes the thought-provoking suggestion that there are far more than the familiar five senses insisted-upon by textbooks. The point is proved by demonstrating at least ten distinct human senses (temperature, balance, proprioception, time, etc...) and indicating others possessed by animals.

August 2004

I delivered eight interactive exhibits to the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, for their new Kelvin Gallery. These are basically screwed-down, bench-mounted versions of the Discovery Disk exhibits. Several of them are completely new designs, though. Bench-mounting is a great way of extending the usefulness of my Discovery Disk format, because electrical components etc. which protrude below the circular base can conveniently be recessed into a suitable cut-out in the supporting surface.

I produced a further set of interactive exhibit performance specifications for the Spaceport (new astronomy visitor centre, Merseyside) tender document.

I presented the first of my three new shows, "Energise your teacher", to the Thinktank team in Birmingham. The props I produced included an earth-insulated 'electric chair', a specially weighted bicycle wheel gyro with red handles and a hanging-ring, a simple engine powered by a burning shortbread finger biscuit, and a rather spectacular 4-metres-high tubular frame and pulley-system for hoisting and dangling a teacher (from the audience) high in the air...

July 2004

More Exploding Custard shows in Kidderminster and at the Coventry Science Festival, now in its second year

I produced a set of interactive exhibit performance specifications for the Spaceport (new astronomy visitor centre, Merseyside) tender document. .

Having tendered competitively for scripting new science shows for the theatre at the Thinktank science centre, I won a contract for producing three of them. I suspect my ideas for titles may have helped: for example, "Energise your teacher: ten almost painless experiments."

The annual British Interactive Group event at Herstmonceaux made an enjoyable end to the month. This year, my entry for the best demo competion involved producing considerable amounts of smoke with several different kinds of hand-twirled firesticks...

June 2004

My Thinktank Discovery Disk exhibits were a big hit at the Cheltenham Science Festival, where they were continuously hammered for a week by young children with no breakdowns or damage.

Exploding Custard had its summer season at the Snowdonia National Park field studies centre in Wales, and at the Derby Scitec science festival.

I flew up to Glasgow to advise the Hunterian Museum about interactive exhibit ideas for the new Kelvin gallery.

I produced an interactive exhibit concept-development report for the new Spaceport astronomy visitor attraction on Merseyside.

May 2004

Delivered three interactives to the Landesmuseum für Technik und Arbeit, Mannheim, Germany. My favourite one was an air-table on which rainbow-sparkling CDs glide slowly yet almost endlessly over a black surface, gracefully rebounding from stretched elastic at the sides.

I managed to be shortlisted, against two other firms, for developing, producing and touring Britain's Einstein Year travelling exhibition for the Institute of Physics. One of my two competitors turned out to be the Science Museum, London, who won the contract.

Trained the Thinktank education team in the use of the new Discovery Disk exhibits.

April 2004

More Exploding Custard shows. Also a visit to a village primary school in the South of England which I am helping to produce its own outdoor hands-on 'science centre'.

I was visited by one of my South African contacts, who is currently advising their government about strategies for science communication to the public. I took him to meet the manager of one of Britain's large, new, millennium-funded science centres. The meeting amply confirmed what I'd been saying to him about large-scale 'flagship' projects not necessarily being the most cost-effective use of limited funding.

Produced another set of 20 Discovery Disk exhibits, this time for Thinktank, the large new science centre in Birmingham. Together with their four flight-cases, these now form the basis of Thinktank's educational outreach programme.

March 2004

'Science Week' comes round again. Out on the road with my Exploding Custard show. I visited five different venues all over England, including the Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton. This is about the sixth time I've performed a one-man show in a theatre. I never dreamed I'd do anything like that... The theatre manager asked me why I wasn't doing it full-time!

February 2004

A nice, quiet month! I spent a couple of days preparing some spectacular-looking chemistry effects for a film about the chemical industry, then spent an interesting day in a film studio helping with the filming.

January 2004

Funded by the British Council, I spent two eye-opening weeks in South Africa. What an amazing country! In Johannesburgh I spent a couple of days of intense discussions with the team responsible for the large and potentially wonderful new Sci Bono science centre. In Durban Sciencentre I saw some exhibits I had worked on 17 years ago, still going strong. In Richards Bay, I helped my energetic host, Derek Fish, Director of Unizul Science Centre, run a four-day "Training Camp" event for practically everyone else involved in the growing South African science centre scene.

Phew! I'd like to do that again! Photos are here.

December 2003

My 2003 Christmas greeting to all website visitors. Includimg details of a really neat scientific party trick. How to blow out a candle two metres away, using a plastic bottle...

An interactive exhibit about magnetic fields was completed and sent off to CERN in Geneva.

November 2003

I attended the very stimulating 2003 ECSITE Conference at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany.

Work on the interactive multimedia "Factory Tour" for Catalyst is continuing. I presented an Exploding Custard performance for the Royal Society of Chemistry, at Nottingham Trent University, on 10th November, for a particularly rowdy (but very appreciative) teenage audience..

I have updated my Science Communicators' Quotation Kit. It now has well over a hundred useful, thought-provoking and amusing quotes.

October 2003

I installed an exhibit to show the principle of a diamond anvil cell: the first of the set of mantle geology exhibits designed for Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington.

I am also working on an interactive multimedia "Factory Tour" for audience-participation in a new interactive theatre at Catalyst, the chemical industry museum in Widnes. There's so much more to "interactivity" than just hands-on exhibits...

September 2003

The Deep, in Hull, is the best aquarium I have seen anywhere. (As a one-time marine biologist who personally built Britain's first "Sea Life" aquarium before a bigger outfit came along and pinched the name, I know what I'm talking about here.) I was asked to repair and re-design a problematic interactive exhibit that others had produced. How we did this makes an interesting story, with an important design lesson.

I went to Grenoble for a working-weekend with a team putting together a funding application for a collaborative, European, interactive exhibition about mathematics.

August 2003

There are photos here of the dazzling lights, bubbling flasks of coloured liquid and swirling clouds I rigged up for a major event run by the Umbro sports-wear company. It seemed very effective. I still have all this gear, in case anyone wants to hire it again...

July 2003

The Science Alive exhibition of my Discovery Disks has opened in Hong Kong and feedback from The British Council is excellent. I have added some photographs of the exhibition here.

I have also updated the Exploding Custard page and included a philosophical rationale for those boring grown-ups who think kitchen-table experimentation is less important than classroom learning.

June 2003

This has been a very busy time for my popular talks and shows. Requests for Exploding Custard are getting out of hand! This started about thirteen years ago merely as an amusing sideline to my main work, and a way of keeping in touch with the public.

I also presented Blown-up Biology at the excellent Cheltenham Science Festival. I experimented with a particularly complex audiovisual setup but everthing went very smoothly indeed and feedback was extremely encouraging. Developing a slick new show involves a HUGE amount of thinking and preparation...

May 2003

I develeped several practical workshop activities for children. I was commissioned to design a set of Key Stage 3 classroom "kits" with which small groups of children can each design, build and (semi-competitively) test a wind-powered electricity generator, a water-powered electricity generator and a solar-powered sausage cooker.

I also researched ideas for a large-scale programme of activities and events based around a paper-aircraft design competion.

April 2003

Hong Kong schools closed because of the SARS outbreak, forcing temporary postponement of the opening of my Science Alive exhibition of Discovery Disk miniature interactive exhibits for The British Council.

I had some very promising meetings with a toy design firm.

Working for another company, I have found an unsuspected talent for designing small computer games for interactive television. I wonder if this is because I personally have little patience with computer games, have a low boredom threshold and need plenty of mental stimulation?

March 2003

Photos of the latest set of twenty Discovery Disks are now on the website.

February 2003

My table-top-sized Discovery Disks idea seems to be taking off! The British Council in Hong Kong has ordered a set of twenty completely new designs relating to "Investigating Science". Initially, during April, they will be exhibited in Hong Kong, then they will go on tour around mainland China, packed in their mobile cases.

January 2003

The Hong Kong Science Museum has invited me to come and talk about interactive exhibit design with their staff. Techniquest (Cardiff, UK) is buying a set of "magnetism" Discovery Disks. A new museum in Sicily is consulting me about smells (!). Another museum in Italy is discussing geology interactives. The New York Hall of Science has asked me to help brainstorm an important new project. Two astronomy exhibits are nearly ready for delivery to Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Science and Technology Centre in Saudi Arabia. After producing a well-received interactive exhibit evaluation report for The Deep, an first-rate new aquarium in Hull, I am just starting work on some minor improvements.

December 2002

I was on the radio at 4.30pm on 19th December! BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Christmas edition of their "Material World" science series, all about scientific toys. The BBC invited me to join a panel with two children and Richard Gregory, the "founder" of the British hands-on science centre movement.

I had lunch with Richard afterwards and we reflected on the modern trend towards over-packaged and over-hyped toys that promise more than they deliver. The children on our panel had shown a clear preference for my personal toy-collection (I brought it with me) of cheap-and-simple old favourites, like the gyroscope, the tippe top, the animating flick-book etc. Over our Chinese meal, we sadly reflected on the infatuation, in some modern science centres, with pseudo-educational wow-factor gloss rather than the real, phenomenological substance which attracts children, and benefits them, most. In coming months and years, dwindling repeat-visits will provide hard evidence.

November 2002

This year's ECSITE Conference was held in Britain. As usual, it was a stimulating break from work and a great opportunity to catch up with old friends worldwide and to network with about 540 other delegates. The Gala Dinner took place in The Natural History Museum. Few of us will ever forget the setting: the beautifully lit architecture, the towering Diplodocus skeleton, and the fine musical entertainment. I am making available ten of my photographs. If you weren't there, just see what you missed...

I displayed a set of my small-scale tabletop Discovery Disks at the Conference. Contact me for more information, or to talk informally about any interactive science-communication problems. I've been doing this work longer than most people and can usually shoot good ideas at people like machine-gun fire. Try me!

October 2002

Earlier this year I had rather nervously accepted an invitation to present my Blown-up Biology lecture demonstration in Potsdam University at the annual meeting of the Association of German Biologists (VDBiol - Verband Deutscher Biologen). Mine was the 5.30pm "graveyard slot" on Saturday, following an unbroken three hours of high-powered research lectures. Imagine! I had to present my highly informal family demonstration of live pond-life, music and sound-effects to an already tired audience consisting of Germany's top biologists and biology teachers. Fortunately, my specimens survived the flight from Britain and I survived the lecture. In fact, my amoebae etc. were on their best behaviour and the show went down pretty well. Afterwards several scientists remarked how little opportunity their work gave them to pause and enjoy the beauty of small-scale life-forms.

September 2002

The British Association Festival of Science is always enjoyable. This year's venue in Leicester seemed particularly pleasant. I was invited one evening to sit among Nobel prize-winners and other "real" scientists on the prestigious end-of-day "highlights" panel. I reckoned that getting someone to stand on a box of eggs would be a quick way to illustrate my science communication philosophy. My volunteer from the audience was a good sport who later confessed to weighing 17 stones. We failed to demonstrate the uncanny strength of eggshell architecture, but the resulting mess caused great hilarity and certainly highlighted the importance of laughter in my trade...

August 2002

Visited a historic cotton mill visitor attraction in Scotland, to see my "tactile video" exhibit in action. Sometimes I just love using high technology to do something really simple. Visitors crank a little handle to drive a computer animation of a working mill, complete with mechanical sound effects and little people walking to and fro.

July 2002

Produced an unusual set of tabletop-scale magnetism interactives. Also several days consultancy in Germany, brainstorming the layout of a new children's museum.

June 2002

A busy month for my science shows. Also delivered a demonstration model of a "fibre camera" for use by a scientist to explain his work at a conference.

May 2002

Here's a short article I recently wrote about "Exploratory" exhibits. I think the simple, practical, conceptual model it describes is fundamentally useful and really important for any project needing "sticky" interactive experiences that produce significantly more repeat visits.

I've added a picture of an impressive-looking Samsung exhibition stand, incorporating some input from me in the form of a particularly spectacular multiple ball-and-blower unit..

My rendered CAD designs for six new "mantle geology" interactives also look quite promising.

April 2002

I've produced a report for the UK Atomic Energy Authority about nuclear fusion for primary school children (!). Also, the first embodiment of my new "tactile video" invention is successfully up and running now.

March 2002

Science week always goes on much longer than a week! It's all a blur now! Belfast, London, Portsmouth, Hull, Sheffield, Gainsborough, Birmingham. I've been on the road all over the country with Exploding Custard. Click on the link to see a nice photographic animation of a custard powder fireball. I put this together from three images provided by a fast-shooting photographer in Portsmouth.

February 2002

I'm pleased with my low-maintenance canal-lock exhibit. Do take a look at it...

Astromony interactives for Valencia

In December 2001 I installed a set of eleven "space" interactives at Ciutat de les Arts I les Ciencies, Valencia, Spain. These include some of my very best exhibit design and fabrication work. Please click here to see them.