Ground-breaking Digital Dimensions exhibition has been brought to life by first-year degree students learning at the higher education provider based on the Wakefield site, where epic staging for Take That, Hugh Jackman and The Spice Girls was created

●      Soundtrack for Digital Dimensions produced by Kaiser Chiefs’ Vijay Mistry

●      Local school children were used as ‘sounding board’ during exhibit design

●      Launch guests included Halifax MP Holly Lynch and the students’ families

●      First month ‘soft launch’ has seen 18,000 visitors wowed by the exhibition

●      The back-end servers and coding that make it all work are also on show

Eureka! The National Children’s Museum has unveiled a sector-first collaboration with one of the UK’s best-kept creative secrets - bringing luminous, touch-sensitive pillars of light, 3D musical cubes and a giant motion capture tunnel to the award-winning attraction.

Digital Dimensions - which officially launched on Thursday (June 27) - has been developed by first-year students learning their trade at Backstage Academy, part of the Wakefield-based Production Park, a community of live events businesses.

The facility is responsible for the staging, lighting design and technology behind some of the world’s biggest arena concerts shows, including recent tours by Take That, Hugh Jackman and The Spice Girls as well as Beyoncé & Jay-Z.

Running until November, the exhibition uses some of the most advanced and cutting-edge technology available in the world and features plenty of colour, interactivity, sound and spectacle to keep children busy throughout the summer holidays.

Alongside a touch-triggered 3D shapes memory game and luminous touch-sensitive pillars of light that all flash when the “master pole” is found, Digital Dimensions features three magical doorways. When opened they take visitors into a different virtual scene each time including a dive underwater with fish and aquatic life, a voyage into space and a trip to the wild full of lions and tigers. There are also glimpses of famous world landmarks.

Entering a new dimension through one of the exhibition’s magical doorways Image credit: Matt Thomas

The exhibition - which took three months to conceive and build from scratch - even has a unique soundtrack created by Kaiser Chiefs’ drummer Vijay Mistry, a Eureka! Ambassador.

Eureka! Chief Executive Leigh-Anne Stradeski said: “Our Spark gallery, which houses Digital Dimensions, is designed for digital art installations that are fully accessible for children and young people.

“So we were really excited about the opportunity to work with Backstage Academy and Production Park as this project represents something totally new. It is full of mesmerising, transformative and creative tech designed and developed by exceptionally-gifted students.

“Unlike anything we have hosted before, it really is an industry-first using the sort of technological innovation normally reserved for the world’s biggest concert arenas.”

Eureka!’s Spark gallery has previously been home to three pioneering exhibitions – digiPlaySpace, Fusion: Adventures in digital art and Patternarium – all developed by arts organisations of global acclaim. Carla Rapoport, founder of The Lumen Prize for Art and Technology, which curated Fusion, praised Eureka! saying: “There’s no museum in the world - outside of the Tate Modern - that is dedicating as much space to digital art as Eureka!”

Leigh-Anne added: “During our soft launch over the last month, we have had 18,000 visitors through Spark and all have said how wowed they were. Part of our build process was to do a lot of consultation with local children who helped us road test the ideas. One of our missions here is to give young people a voice, so this was really important.

“We also hope it will inspire children to think about creative digital careers and how science and art connect. That is one reason why we are showing the back-end of the servers and the coding behind it all to let them see just how these stunning effects were created.”

Each of the 10 students involved is studying for a BA (Hons) in Live Visual Design & Production at Backstage Academy, which includes on-the-job training in the skills regularly used to make concert-going audiences scream with delight.

Kira O’Brien, one of the 10 who acted as Project Manager, said it was a dream come true to be involved having visited Eureka! on many occasions as a child. She explained: “What the student team has done is true innovation. I knew the Eureka! ethos as a previous visitor so it was important everything we created could be touched and played with by the kids. We began with that and added some magic and interactivity to it using digital technology.

“It was a challenge to make some of the things interactive that weren’t meant to be, such as the plastic poles, but we pulled it off. Even something as simple as the length of the wires you use can make a big difference in loss of conductivity. The motion-tracking too has never been done on the same scale before. It has been such a useful experience for us as a first-year group and we have learned loads to take into our future careers.”

Digital Dimensions, housed on Eureka!’s ground floor, will allow families to:

●       Test memories and coordination against a series of 3D musical cubes – working together to remember patterns to trigger sounds and test their recall

●       Weave through luminous, touch-sensitive, colour-changing pillars of light - and race to find the one different pole each time that makes them all flash

●       Step into a giant, colourful motion-capture tunnel of astounding visual effects, created by interaction with their movements to produce new things to see and hear

Eureka! & Backstage Academy representatives at the launch (L-R) - Eureka! Chief Executive Leigh-Anne Stradeski, Production Park Chairman & Founder Adrian Brookes along with Ruth Saxton, Shannon Harvey, Graham Thorne, Tudor Gwynn, Rachel Nicholson & Kira O’Brien.

Image credit: Eureka!

Production Park’s Head of Research and Lecturer for Backstage Academy Shannon Harvey said: “What has been great to learn is that all of the children in my daughter’s school know about the exhibition, have all seen the flyers and can’t wait to try it. That makes me really proud of what the team has created.

“We encourage our students to do real-life projects that inspire audiences so for us to have had the opportunity to work with an organisation like Eureka! was amazing.”

A family testing out the motion-capture corridor with their movements shown behind them Image credit: Matt Thomas

Rachel Nicholson, Vice Principal of Backstage Academy, added: “Digital Dimensions is a fantastic example of the brilliant creativity and innovation that comes when education and professional organisations collaborate. It has given our students the opportunity to imagine, design, prototype, adapt and deliver. The real judges of success will be the children who will visit over the summer holidays. We can’t wait to see and hear what they think!”

Halifax MP Holly Lynch, who attended the official launch, said: “It is always amazing to come and see the latest exhibitions at Eureka! and Digital Dimensions is clearly fun for all ages. My nine-month-old baby boy loved it and there were plenty of adults having a good time too.

“It is a fantastic achievement for the museum, keeping it new and fresh, and the local West Yorkshire collaboration showcasing the talent and skills of the students is a really interesting proposition that has brought it all to life.”

Alongside Digital Dimensions, the first-floor Spark gallery space will continue to host an extended run featuring elements of IOU Theatre’s Patternarium throughout the summer.

For more information, interviews or pictures, contact:

For Eureka!

●       Sophie Ballinger, Eureka! - sophie.ballinger@eureka.org.uk, 07970 154810

●       Jonathan Weinberg, Bootstrapped PR, jw@bootstrappedpr.com, 07947 141014

For Backstage Academy

●       Jack Scarr, Backstage Academy, jack.scarr@backstage-academy.co.uk, 07763 497171

●       Jerry Gilbert, JGP PR, jerry@jgp-pr.com, 07770 233091