This September school holidays, children can control digital sea creatures with their bodies, meet a five-eyed prehistoric animal in virtual reality and watch their movements reshape an entire teamLab installation at ArtScience Museum.
The programme brings together several experiences under one roof, making it particularly useful for families looking for a day out that combines play with something genuinely educational. One activity is complimentary, while selected workshops and tours are only available on 5 and 12 September 2026.
A Free Ocean Experience Controlled By Your Movements
At Environmental Empathy: Ocean Protectors, visitors use their bodies to interact with digital ocean characters instead of tapping on a conventional screen. The motion-tracked experience uses real-time gesture recognition, allowing participants to explore the marine world through movement and play. It is inspired by real people and stories connected to OceanX.
The experience ends with a digital workbook on iPads, giving families an opportunity to explore the science behind what they have just encountered.
Travel 3.5 Billion Years Into The Past
Dinosaurs may receive most of the attention, but David Attenborough’s First Life goes much further back. The immersive virtual reality experience transports visitors 3.5 billion years into the past to examine how life developed from single-celled organisms into increasingly complex creatures. Visitors will encounter Opabinia, which had five eyes, the fearsome-looking Anomalocaris and the spiny, worm-like Hallucigenia.
Created using paleontological research and CGI technology, the experience turns an exceptionally distant chapter of natural history into something visitors can see around them.
Image adapted from Art Science Museum
Children Can Try Being Marine Biologists
Let’s Learn Marine Biology with Digital Art gives younger visitors more to do than simply look at marine animals. Participants take on the role of marine biologists as they investigate how different species survive across the ocean’s varied environments.
Using observation, evidence gathering and scientific enquiry, they will study the adaptations that help marine life thrive. They will then use the AmberDraw digital drawing app to illustrate and communicate their findings.
A Kids’ Tour Goes Beneath The Ocean’s Surface
Families visiting Into the Ocean: Journey Beneath can also join a dedicated children’s tour led by an ArtScience Museum Education Specialist.
Instead of expecting children to absorb every display on their own, the tour uses stories and accessible explanations to introduce the different ocean zones and the biodiversity found within them.
- 5 September 2026: 11am to 12pm
- 12 September 2026: 2pm to 3pm
- Where: Ripple Room, ArtScience Laboratory, Basement 2
Image from ArtScience Museum
teamLab Future World Has Changed Again
This permanent exhibition has been one of ArtScience Museum’s best-known attractions since 2016, but its evolving format means returning visitors will not necessarily encounter the same space they remember.
Reopened on 29 August 2026, the refreshed gallery features two new artworks, I Know Myself Through the Flow and The Ethereal Body of Flowers. They appear alongside updated presentations of Universe of Water Particles and Flow Reaches Far. The gallery behaves like a shared digital environment. Water particles flow through the space, flowers emerge and visitors’ movements affect what happens next.
In Flow Reaches Far, a person’s movement creates a flow that can meet those produced by other visitors, forming changing vortices. When everyone stops or leaves, the effects eventually disappear. This makes each visit slightly unpredictable. A quiet gallery and a room filled with energetic children can produce noticeably different results.
Images adapted from teamLab
