We visited the Birmingham Museum and art gallery aswell as the Thinktank a few weeks ago , so thought I would share some information about these two places. Even though we live close to Birmingham centre, have never been to either of these places, so in the school holidays we decided to go. We parked on the car park at Millennium point just by the entrance to the think tank as this is good value parking within Birmingham as the price is £4.50 max for the day.
We walked from Millennium point to the Birmingham Museum and Art gallery which is approx 1 mile away on foot and takes about 15mins walking through the main town centre. Birmingham museum is free entry, it is a great place to go with the exhibits changing every few months, when we went one of the exhibits was to do with Cardinal John Henry Newman, now im not really into religion but this was one of the reasons the pope visited Birmingham recently. Now on a personal point of view it is said that there is a lot of violent images in computer games etc, some of the painting to do with religion do sometimes have graphic violence portrayed, though they are great works of art all the same.
The one exhibit we seen was part of the Staffordshire Hoard, now this was very interesting to see, as I live local to the field in which is was found in Brownhills, though on a off point on this it is classed as the Staffordshire hoard, but was found in a field that is classed as Brownhills e Walsall, West Midland, now yes Brownhills up until the 1970’s was under Lichfield council so we was classed as Staffordshire, but not now, Though as I live in Brownhills, I would still prefer to be classed under Staffordshire than Walsall, no offence on either side 🙂 , There is only part of the gold hoard at Birmingham the other parts are at the Stoke museum.
All of the artwork and exhibits at the gallery are great to look at and be prepared to spend a good few hours around here if you want to look at everything, all in all it is a great place to visit.
The Thinktank is located within the Millennium point Building and the entrance is on the second floor opposite the IMAX theatre. I had found some discount voucher off HERE which gives you 25% of entrance price (remember to get different voucher codes for each person going) The normal entrance fee is £11.75 for adults and £7.95 for children.
The Thinktank is great for kids as everything in interactive, as they are using and playing with the exhibits it is learning them about all things from recycling to how DNA works etc. I not going into all the exhibits that are there as there are 3 floors of all different things to do, the ground level floor has all the old type of machines in from a steam powered train to all the old types of engines that were used in older factories. On this floor there is also different quizzes for the kids to do, you have to solve the different clues and get your quiz card stamped with the correct answer, once done you fill name address in to win prizes if drawn. I think there was 3 different quizzes, this really did keep my daughter occupied and did make this interesting for her. I loved looking at all the old transport exhibits.
There is also the planetarium to go into this you need to get tickets for the various shows throughout the day these tickets are free, now we didn’t go into the thinktank until after midday at even at that time there was no available tickets for any of the shows throughout that day, so if you do go make sure you get your tickets from the 3rd floor desk as soon as you get in, though at the end of the day is a preview show that you don’t need any tickets for this is only around a 10 minute show, but was great as you did get to see the full 360 dome visual effects, the one we seen was showing walking on the moon and the stars and a roller-coaster ride in outerspace, both were set to good music, so this was well worth waiting till nearly close time to see it.
The Thinktank is a great place to visit you could easily spend all day doing the different actives, It reminded me of the Enginuity museum at Iron bridge which is the same kind of attraction, though my daughter did say she enjoyed the one at iron bridge more than the think tank, but myself there is more to do at the Birmingham thinktank.
Normally I take loads of photos on the days out, but really didn’t take that many photos at either the Birmingaham Musuem & art gallery or the Think Tank, so sorry no real photos, but both are great places to go for a family day out.