Families Archives - The Mechanical Art & Design Museum

Christmas & New Year Holiday Times 2019/20

Katie — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 13:17:06 +0000

These are MAD’s opening times over the holiday period. Please note, you are welcome to come and have a look around our gift shop without paying to enter the museum.

Maintenance Week – January 2020

The MAD Museum will be closed from Monday 13th January until Friday 17th January 2020 (5 days). This is to carry out some TLC on our hard-working machines after the Christmas holiday. MAD will be open as normal from Saturday 18th January, 10:00am until 5:30pm. Thank you for understanding.

The post Christmas & New Year Holiday Times 2019/20 appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

October 2019 Half Term Opening Times

Katie — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:28:53 +0000

From Saturday 26th October until Sunday 3rd November The MAD Museum will be open every day from 10:00am until 5:30pm.

The Museum will be open as usual from Monday 4th November 10:30am – 4:30pm.

PUSHCHAIRS

We are sorry to say that when our MAD Museum is busy, we can’t accommodate pushchairs. These busy times typically happen during holiday periods, weekends and wet-weather days. Ideally, we would like to welcome everyone in but as MAD is relatively small, we simply don’t have the space for pushchairs to manoeuvre around the exhibits and other museum visitors. We do have pushchair storage in the museum’s entrance, under the stairs at street level and you are welcome to store bags upstairs by our reception desk. We are very sorry if this causes you any inconvenience, if you would like to discuss this, please talk to a member of staff at MAD’s reception desk or email us.

The post October 2019 Half Term Opening Times appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

Summer Design Competition – The Winners

Katie — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 13:48:42 +0000

Over the Summer holidays we asked visitors to invent a new weird and wonderful track pack for our marble run wall. Hundreds of people entered and the Judges (MAD’s 4 Managers) had the challenging task of selecting 3 winners.

It was very tricky to pick only 3 winners; the calibre was so high and we had so many clever creations to ponder over! Many of the designs really made us smile, it’s wonderful to see there are definitely some future engineers and artists out there!

Mike Greenfield

Front of House Manager, The MAD Museum

The design competition ran from Saturday 20th July until Monday 2nd September 2019. We contacted the 3 worthy winners last week and we would now like to announce who they are:

1ST COMPETITION WINNER: Oliver Peake, age 10 from Nuneaton.

Oliver’s creation was so brilliant we are currently in the process of making his design into a real-life track part. This will be engraved with his name on and will be added to our museum’s marble wall for Oliver and everyone else to enjoy. Here’s his winning design –

2ND COMPETITION WINNER: Charlotte Paine – aged 12 from Nottingham.

3RD COMPETITION WINNER: Kate Sharp -aged 36 from Gloucester.

All 3 winners have been given MAD gift vouchers to be spent in our museum’s shop and free museum tickets for their efforts and creative genius!

If you would like to enter one of our design competitions, please keep an eye on our website’s blog page or MAD’s Facebook page for all the latest details.

The post Summer Design Competition – The Winners appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

Summer 2019 Design Competition

Katie — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 09:16:15 +0000

Saturday 20th July – Monday 2nd September 2019

If you have been to The MAD (Mechanical Art & Design) Museum recently, you will know there is an interactive wall for visitors to build their own marble runs on.

Using inspiration from around the museum, the wall encourages creative thinking and systematic design but it is a lot of fun!

The aim of the game is to use the various track parts to make the marble travel from the top of the wall to the bottom without whizzing off.

This Summer The MAD Museum invites you to invent a new weird and wonderful track part for MAD Marbles.

What do you want on the wall? Loops and hoops, elevators, slopes, staircases, tubes, spiral tracking, chimes and jumps – the possibilities are endless.

Release your inner inventor! This design competition is open to all age groups, draw your craziest creation and post it to The MAD Museum.

The three winners will receive goodie bags full of MAD treats and their winning track part will be made into a real piece to go on the museum’s MAD Marbles wall. Not only that but the winner’s name will also be printed on the new track piece.

Everyone that uses the triumphant track piece will know it’s yours!

The MAD Museum exhibits mind-blowing artwork from some of the world’s most pioneering inventors, join the illustrious list this Summer!

Design Brief

Draw your design on a (landscape or portrait) white A4 piece of paper. If needed, please include how the track part would work with instructions.
If you win, we will need to be able to make it so please make your drawing and any notes really understandable.

Submission Dates

This competition is open from Saturday 20th July. All entries need to be received by 5pm on Monday 2nd September 2019.
The Winner will be announced and contacted via email on Wednesday 11th September 2019.

Get Inspired

We exhibit around 10 different rolling ball machines at our MAD Museum so you can gather loads of ideas just by visiting. You can also Click Here to go straight to MAD’s YouTube page, here you can watch some of the world’s most incredible rolling ball sculptures.

Design Sheet

You can submit your design a normal piece of A4 paper or you can download and print this design sheet.

If you use your own sheet of paper, please don’t forget to include your name, age, address and email adress so that we can contact you if you win.

Competition Design Sheet

How to Apply

POST:
Design it at home and then drop it in or post it to: The MAD Museum, 4/5 Henley Street, Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire. CV37 6PT.

EMAIL:
Attach your design to an email and send it to MAD at info@themadmuseum.co.uk. Please include your name, age, email address and address with your design.

The post Summer 2019 Design Competition appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

Summer Holiday 2019 Opening Times

Katie — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 08:49:36 +0000

From Saturday 20th July until Monday 2nd September (including Bank Holiday Monday on 26th August), The MAD Museum will be open every day from 10:00am until 5:30pm.

The Museum will be open as usual from Tuesday 3rd September, 10:00am – 5:00pm.

This Summer we will be running a Design Competition – find out more here

During busy times we don’t have the capacity for pushchairs in our museum. Therefore, we ask that all pushchairs are left in the museum’s entrance, under the staircase, at street-level. Thank you for understanding, if you would like to discuss this further, go to our Contact Us page and get in touch.

The post Summer Holiday 2019 Opening Times appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

New Exhibits coming to MAD

Katie — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 08:23:44 +0000

We are currently preparing 3 fantastic new pieces of automata ready for exhibiting. These sculptures were all made by the legendary automata maker, Keith Newstead.

We first came to hear about these one-of-a-kind pieces when a private collector contacted us. Over the years he had amassed over 70 pieces of automata. Now looking to downsize his house, the collector wanted to sell some of the larger sculptures. He offered them to The MAD Museum because he knew we were the UK’s centre for mechanical art and that we would give them a good home.

All three sculptures are in perfect condition and are currently in the process of being wired up and properly protected for presentation. The largest of the new additions will be the biggest piece of automata that we have ever displayed at our museum. This quirky sculpture plays a full rendition of “Run Rabbit Run” sung by Keith Newstead himself.

We’ve exhibited several of Keith Newstead’s creations in the past and we sell his paper automata kits in our gift shop. Keith Newstead is one of the most famous automata artists in the word, find out more about him here –

These exhibits will be on display from the beginning of the Summer holiday, come down to see them for yourself.

The post New Exhibits coming to MAD appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

Father’s Day Discounts 2019

Katie — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 10:45:46 +0000

On Sunday 16th June 2019 we will be offering extra big discounts. Get 20% off Dad’s ticket or 10% off a family ticket.

This discount is only running on Father’s Day. Please either say the following or show this webpage on your phone to a member of staff at MAD’s reception desk when you are paying.

FATHER’S DAY CODE – DESIGNER DAD

Dad’s ticket – Adult £6.24 (instead of £7.80) or Concession for 60yrs+ £5.04 (instead of £6.30)
Family ticket – £19.80 (instead of £22.00)

THE T&Cs

These vouchers cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount. They cannot be purchased using Tesco Clubcard vouchers and cannot be used to purchase shop items or joint tickets with Shakespeare’s Schoolrooms & Guildhall or Stratford Butterfly Farm. These discounts are only available on Sunday 16th June 2019.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

The post Father’s Day Discounts 2019 appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

New Interactive Gear Wall

Katie — Mon, 13 May 2019 13:17:48 +0000

What are Gears?

Gears rotate together to move part of a machine. They are a fundamentally important mechanism in everyday life, you’ll find them in cars, clocks, kitchen mixers, bikes, vacuum cleaners and many other items.

Gears are wheels with teeth that slot together. They allow the user to alter direction, adjust the speed, measure time and create a large amount of force with a small amount of impact.

New to MAD

You told us you liked the interactive elements in our museum so we recently installed a large gear wall in our interactive area.
Like our marble run wall, visitors are encouraged to think up and try out their own creations. Learn about energy and forces while having fun!

Get In Touch

Please get in touch if you have any more great ideas!

The post New Interactive Gear Wall appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

CBBC’s All Over The Place – Filming a MAD Feature

Katie — Wed, 01 May 2019 14:05:08 +0000

In the early hours of Monday 29th April, we opened up our MAD Museum for an extra special reason. After a couple of months of planning, a film crew and 2 presenters from ‘All Over The Place’ came to film a MAD feature.

‘All Over The Place’ is a very popular children’s tv show on CBBC. Now in its 9th series, the premise is that different presenters go on a bizarre quest across the world looking for unusual and fun places.

The crew spent several hours at MAD filming the presenters Inel Tomlinson and Ed Petrie interacting with our machines and doing closeups shots of our exhibits. There was a real buzz in the air.

It was great fun to watch behind the scenes. The presenters were very entertaining and everyone was smiling at the end of each take. Our museum’s founder, Richard Simmons even made an on-air appearance, I’m really looking forward to seeing our MAD part in the program once it goes live!

Katie Wilson

Head of Marketing, The MAD Museum

The MAD Museum’s feature will air in the 10th series of ‘All Over The Place’ – date TBC.

Here are some photos from the day –

The presenters, Inel Tomlinson and Ed Petrie filming inside The MAD Museum.

Richard’s starring role where he spoke about his ‘Kitchenator’ with the presenters.

The post CBBC’s All Over The Place – Filming a MAD Feature appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.

May Bank Holiday Opening Times 2019

Katie — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 10:27:13 +0000

May Bank Holidays

On both Monday 6th May and Monday 27th May, The MAD Museum will be open from 10:00am until 5:30pm. Last entry at 4:15pm.

May Half Term Opening Times

From Saturday 25th May until Sunday 2nd June 2019, we will be open every day from 10:00am until 5:30pm.

———–

Tickets are purchased on the day, we do not sell tickets in advance. Each ticket gives you entry for the whole day, you are welcome to pop in and out, just make sure you keep hold of your ticket.

The post May Bank Holiday Opening Times 2019 appeared first on The Mechanical Art & Design Museum.