Operation Ouch! Brains, Bogies and You – Visual story

This visual story provides images and text to help you prepare for your visit to Operation Ouch! Brains Bogies and You at the Science and Industry Museum.

You can also look at the exhibition sensory map and watch a walkthrough video. A visual story is also available to guide you through your visit to the rest of the museum.

The exhibition is split into different sections which each have their own theme and colour. These are:

The Lab – Entrance (white)
The Brain HQ (pink)
Mindboosters (pink)
Hearing (blue)
Touch (pink)
Sight (green)
Taste and Smell (yellow)
The Lab – Exit (white)

There is neon lighting throughout the exhibition. This is mostly above head height. There are small video screens in every section except Mindboosters. There are things to touch, explore and play with in every section.

Special Exhibitions Gallery

Operation Ouch! Brains, Bogies and You is in the Special Exhibitions Gallery which is on level -1.

When you arrive at the museum, show your ticket to the staff at the Information Desk. You might need to queue here. Please speak to a member of staff if you find it hard to queue and we'll help you get to the front.

To get to the Special Exhibitions Gallery:

Go down the ramp
Walk through the Textiles Gallery
Use the stairs or lift to go down to level -1

When you get to level -1, you will see a shop and a ticket desk. The staff at the desk will ask to see your exhibition ticket.

You will also see an Access Hub. This has:

Sensory backpacks with fidgets and stim toys
Ear defenders
Sensory maps
Large print copies of the information panels in the exhibition

You can borrow any of these to use while you are here.

If you borrow ear defenders or a sensory backpack, you need to bring them back to the Access Hub when you have finished exploring the museum.

Waiting area

You might need to wait at the exhibition entrance for a short time until you can go in.

At the exhibition entrance a video will be playing with a countdown clock. This shows how long there is left to wait.

Dr Chris, Dr Xand and Dr Ronx from Operation Ouch! will be in the video. You can watch them while you are waiting.

When the countdown ends, you can go in through the big white doors and you will be in the first room of the exhibition.

A group of people walking through a door at a museum

The Lab – Entrance

The first section of the exhibition is The Lab. A lab is a room where scientists work. It has a large screen showing a big video of the doctors.

There are big pictures of science equipment on the wall and a giant ear shape. You will walk through the ear shape when it's time to go into the next area.

In the video, the doctors explain that they are doing an experiment. If you want to, you can pretend that you have been shrunk down to a tiny size so you can go through the ear.

The inside of the Operation Ouch exhibition at the Science and Industry Museum

The Ear

To get to the next part of the exhibition, go through the giant ear shape. The tunnel is designed to look like an ear canal (the inside of your ear). There are yellow earwax drip shapes and spiky black pretend hairs. You can touch them if you would like to. You will also hear noises that sound like gooey drips.

The Brain HQ

This is a big pink area. This section is themed around the brain. The brain is the body's headquarters so this space is like a control room.

There are lots of brightly coloured tubes and lights.

You can go into all the other sections from here. You can choose which section to visit next. You can come back to the Brain HQ whenever you want to.

Mindboosters

The Mindboosters section is a good place to go if you want to relax or take a break while you are in the exhibition.

There are beanbags you can sit on and fluffy clouds hanging from the ceiling. There are some calm sounds playing. There are no screens in here.

Hearing

The hearing section is a large blue space. It might feel a bit dark when you first come in.

In this space you will see:

A screen with a skeleton that dances when you move in front of it
A balance beam that you can walk across
A wall of different sounds to listen to

There are lots of other activities to explore too. Most of the sound activities are used with headphones, so you can choose if you want to listen or not.

Touch

The touch section is a large pink space. There are lots of different textures that you can touch. In the middle there is an area with lots of different things to play with.

To get through to the next section, you can go through the doorway which has a coloured plastic curtain, or crawl through the small tunnel.

Sight

This section is green. You will see a giant eyeball that you can go inside. It is dark inside the eyeball, and there is a large mirror and coloured neon lights.

There are also optical illusions and displays to look at around the room.

There is a place where you can take a funny photograph. Stand or sit on top of the green floor stickers and you will look huge or tiny in the picture.

This is called an illusion, which means a trick for your eyes.

Taste and Smell

This section is yellow. There are lots of different smells to explore here. You can sniff to guess what the smells are if you would like to.

The smells are all in tubs or behind doors, so you won't smell them unless you want to.

Before you leave this section, you can put on a bogey hat. You can keep your hat and take it home if you want to.

When you are ready to go, head through the giant nose shape. Inside the nose there are drip shapes and green light so it looks like snot.

A man and a boy wearing bogey hats in a museum

The Lab – Exit

This is the last section of the exhibition. This is a white space with a video playing on a big screen. The doctors from Operation Ouch! will explain that this is the end of the experiment.

There are some doctor costumes that you can wear to take a photo here if you would like to. You need to put them back on the hooks when you have finished using them.

We hope you have had fun exploring Operation Ouch! Brains, Bogies and You.