National Science & Media Museum

                  Jo Quinton-Tulloch

Opened in 1983, the National Science and Media Museum sits in the heart of Bradford, exploring the science and culture of image and sound technologies and their impact on our lives.

Part of the Science Museum Group, its galleries and exhibition spaces draw on more than three million objects from its national collection to explore and celebrate photography, film, television, animation, video games and sound technologies.  The museum’s learning programme fuels the imagination and reveals the incredible stories in its collections and exhibitions, helping everyone to see the science in the world around us.

Highlights of the collection include the world’s first colour pictures; John Logie Baird’s original television apparatus; the Daily Herald newspaper photo archive, and Louis Le Prince’s single-lens cine camera, used to capture the first moving images in Leeds.

Located in the first UNESCO City of Film, the museum is also home to Pictureville, Yorkshire’s biggest independent cinema with the last remaining public Cinerama screen in the world. Each year, Pictureville hosts the Widescreen Weekend film festival, attracting cinemagoers from around the world and celebrating some of cinema’s boldest and most exciting formats. The museum is also home to Europe’s fist IMAX.

The museum also produces the annual Yorkshire Games Festival, celebrating all things gaming and the bi-annual Bradford Science Festival, showcasing fascinating science.

The museum is currently temporarily closed to the public as it undergoes a £6 million refurbishment which includes two new permanent galleries, a new passenger lift and improvements to the main welcome area. The museum will reopen in early 2025.

Widescreen Weekend

Widescreen Weekend

Pinhole camera