Virtual experiments, multimedia adventures and live cameras connected with museums all over the world are some of the possibilities offered by TryScience, a programme developed by IBM that, with innovative, interactive formulas, stimulates science learning in young people between the ages of eight and 16.
Because it is accessible online, TryScience is also available in the form of a multimedia kiosk in science museums all round the world, offering a complementary resource for the educational and experimental activities they offer. IBM introduced its first kiosk in Spain in October 2004 in the House of Science in La Coruña. Currently there are 153 kiosks installed in 31 countries round the world.
The National Science and Technology Museum has recently been added to the list. mNACTEC, in accordance with a collaboration agreement signed with IBM, has built its own kiosk, with an innovative design, so its visitors can experiment with TryScience. The kiosk, which was made possible thanks to a donation from IBM, is located in the permanent exhibition space: the mNACTEC interpretation area. Get closer to your industrial heritage!

The idea of celebrating industrial culture this way was born among a network of museum professionals. They found that the minor place industrial culture holds in Danish national collective memory today does not at all match the crucial part industrial culture has actually played in Danish history. The main objective of the Year of Industrial Culture 2007 is to increase the visibility and awareness of the Danish industrial cultural heritage in both museums and in the public.
The project is financed by the Danish Heritage Agency and the Ministry of Culture and sponsored by the Confederation of Danish Industries, the Danish Metalworkers' Union as well as several individual companies. The secretariat of the Year of Industrial Culture 2007 was founded in the middle of 2005 and has since then initiated a number of nationwide activities. However, the majority of the activities marking the Year of Industrial Culture is planned, executed, and financed by local and regional institutions.
So far around 150 institutions have participated in the project with a total number of almost 1.000 activities ranging from major new research based permanent exhibitions and publications to minor citywalks, lectures or conducted tours. Each one tells a new story about life in Danish industrial society in the past, present or future.
At the end of the year the entire 2007 campaign will, undoubtedly, have helped raised both museological and public awareness on industrial culture as an integrated and important part of Danish history and cultural heritage as such. And by that, hopefully, mark not the end of a project, but the beginning of a new and enforced attention on the area in Denmark.
For more information, please visit the website www.ik07.dk