WATCH: University celebrates Manchester Day 2016

20 Jun 2016

How The Brain Box brought grey matter to vivid life for 70,000 revellers

The University played a major part in this year’s amazing Manchester Day.

Manchester Day, created in 2010 and now one of the North West’s flagship events of the summer, celebrates the creativity and diversity of our city.

The University joined more than 2,500 performers and artists from local communities to bring Manchester city centre to life in a fantastic display of colour, sound and movement. An audience of more than 70,000 were wowed by the incredible day of amazing structures, vibrant costumes and pulsating music and dance.

Our contribution included The Brain Box, #mcrbrainbox, an exciting science extravaganza in the Town Hall created by the Faculty of Life Sciences.

Members of the public rummaged around in The Brain Box to discover the wonders of the brain – how it works, how it is studied, what can go wrong in our brains, and how this might be fixed – and interacted with scientists, clinicians, creative practitioners and artists.

They were invited to take part in a huge array of activities, from creating a giant ‘neuron’ live on stage to trying out a real brain surgeon’s drill on an egg to experiencing how stroke can affect your vision.

Professor Andreas Prokop explains how The Brain Box inspired Manchester in this film: