Roll up! Roll up! The carnival is heading to At-Bristol this summer with the opening of its new exhibition, Food! A fantastic feast of fun, which will launch in time for the school summer holidays – Food! aims to explore the amazing science of food, embedded in our everyday lives.
Opening on 23rd July, the permanent exhibition includes 11 exhibits, a Big Top-style fully-functioning kitchen, and a travelling greenhouse, and covers 218m² of the ground floor. Food! is the latest in a growing portfolio of new exhibitions designed and developed by At-Bristol’s in-house Exhibitions and Learning teams, where visitors can follow the journey of food from plot to plate to palate.
Visitors will be able to pop corn using light energy, grind their own grain, converse with the robot chef, milk a cow and lots more. Little ones can dress up like a bee, learn the ‘waggledance’ and collect pollen and nectar from flowers to put into the hive.
The kitchen and greenhouse will host activities which mirror the seasons – where visitors will be able to get hands-on and take part in cool foodie experiments. ‘Summer in the Kitchen’ will feature strawberry dissections and the science behind why BBQed bangers taste so good, whilst ‘Summer in the Greenhouse’ will give visitors a chance to get soil under their fingernails and have a go at growing their own seeds. They will also be able to check out all manner of interesting plants including ‘space wheat’, a strain of wheat (“Apogee”) which was developed for the International Space Station.
Food! will continue At-Bristol’s focus on visitor-generated content, as many of the exhibits will use Explore More technology that allows visitors to save photos, experiments and other things to their At-Bristol wristbands, and once home, will enable them to share their experiences with friends and family. It will go further with an interactive map plotting what’s being grown in Bristol and further afield – visitor participation is essential!
Phil Winfield, At-Bristol’s CEO, said: “Our challenge in At-Bristol is to continually refresh the exhibitions and activities to deliver exciting new content that will engage, intrigue and inspire an interest in science, technology engineering and maths – our new Food! exhibition will do just that.
He adds: “Food is integral to our lives, and by exploring this subject in the exhibition, it’s a chance to engage with food in unusual ways, discover new skills, learn about food as a family and get even the youngest children enthused and more knowledgeable by the food they eat through recipes, role play and experiments. We wanted to do something a little different, so with this exhibition we’ve re-created a carnival where visitors can walk through and engage with a range of surprising activities. This permanent exhibition will allow us to host a wide range of events to add to Bristol’s vibrant calendar, and its growing role as a food capital of the UK.”
With At-Bristol being an educational charity, exhibitions like this wouldn’t be possible without generous funding from sponsors and contributors, and in this case: Almondsbury Garden Centre, Caple Kitchens, the Children’s Food Trust, Daylesford Foundation, Doves Farm, Elior UK, Garfield Westland Foundation and Sutton Seeds.
Food opens on 23 July, with a special celebration event (including a world record attempt!) on Millennium Square from 11-3 on 26 July. At-Bristol is open 10am – 6pm daily throughout the holiday period. For further information, visit www.at-bristol.org.uk.
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