Wonderlab
A mirror maze, an echo tube and more than twenty light-and-sound experiments, free but book before you arrive.
Europe's first permanent IMAX screen opened not in London or Paris but in Bradford, in 1983, and it is still showing current releases on a screen roughly sixteen metres tall. That is the right way into this museum: a northern mill town that decided to become Britain's capital of the moving and still image, and gathered here some 3.5 million objects telling the story of photography, film, television and videogames, among them the world's first photographic negative and the earliest surviving television footage. The building runs to seven floors and reopened in January 2025 after an eighteen-month closure. The new Sound and Vision galleries on levels 3 and 5 are now the strongest part: old televisions, cameras and radios laid out so that you never glaze over, with interactive screens a child grasps before a grown-up does. Also on level 3 is Wonderlab, the light-and-sound gallery: an infinity mirror maze, a fifteen-metre echo tube and more than twenty hands-on experiments. It is free but booking is essential, especially in the summer holidays and half-term weeks when morning slots go early. Level 6 holds Power Up, the one gallery with its own ticket: £3 for an adult and £2.60 for a child aged 4 to 17 (under-fours free), in return for a timed session of real play on machines from every generation, from classic arcade cabinets and Sega to the latest consoles. Teenagers who yawn through museums vanish here and resurface only when their time runs out. Down on level 0, Pictureville is one of only three public cinemas in the world still equipped to screen original three-projector Cinerama, though those showings are rare and tied to festivals; on ordinary days (Tuesday to Sunday) it shows new films, with tickets from £9, and from £12.50 in the IMAX. One small caveat: the cinema has its own bar for film-goers, kept apart from the museum galleries. It is thoroughly pushchair-friendly, with lifts to every floor, a quiet room for prayer that staff will point you to, toilets and baby-changing on level 0 and a cafe open until 16:00. Getting there is easy: five minutes on foot from Bradford Interchange station, fifteen from Forster Square, with public parking on Sharpe Street about 300 metres away. City Park sits right outside the door, its mirror pool and fountains full of paddling children in summer, and halal restaurants are a few minutes' walk in any direction; Bradford is one of the British cities where you never have to hunt for them. Allow two to three hours, and count it the best thing to do on a wet West Yorkshire day.
A mirror maze, an echo tube and more than twenty light-and-sound experiments, free but book before you arrive.
A session of real play on consoles from every generation, on a cheap separate ticket that wins over teenagers.
Europe's first IMAX still runs new releases on a screen sixteen metres tall.
Pictureville, beside City Park, Bradford BD1 1NQ
From Leeds, yes without hesitation: the train is twenty minutes, the museum is free and it fills half a day with children. From Manchester it depends: it is an hour by train or car, and you already have the free Science and Industry Museum there, so do not travel for this alone; pair it with the UNESCO mill village of Saltaire, ten minutes away by train, and it becomes a full day that earns the journey.
Plenty, but aim for Wonderlab on level 3, which is pitched at primary-school age and up though smaller children enjoy it too, and book it in advance. Power Up works best from about seven upwards, and the Sound and Vision galleries hold little ones for twenty minutes at most. In summer the mirror pool in City Park outside the front door rescues whatever is left of the afternoon.