Natural History Museum's Darwin Centre can rival the dinosaurs

Visitors to the museum’s new £78 million Cocoon area — effectively a huge egg-shell in a vast glass box — will feel as though they have just hatched themselves. Emerging from the familiar gloom of the museum’s Victorian building, now 130 years old but still a beloved landmark, the sudden, startling light allowed by soaring walls of clear sheet glass is almost blinding.

It also gives a real sense of occasion and anticipation. Inside this ovum is the world’s greatest collection of plant and insect specimens. Previously hidden away from the public — as were the scientists who found, researched and looked after them — the collected and their present-day collectors are now on display.

Finally, my 11-year-old son Laurie and I feel, the Natural History Museum may have an attraction to rival its celebrated dinosaurs. The real specimens are mainly tucked away in carefully climate-controlled cabinets. But the scientists are not — many can be seen working in their labs, appearing on screens everywhere, or mingling with the visitors.

Scientists become real when you hear that the head of beetles (great job title) started writing to the museum about his favourite subject from the age of seven. Even more so when you hear that his seven-year-old son recently found a new species of beetle in the museum’s garden.

And the same beetle boffin presides over a great interactive game based on packing a bag for an exploratory expedition. Laurie failed when he unwisely chose shorts rather than long trousers for a theoretical trek to the midge-infested lochs of northern Scotland.

There are 40 interactive displays spaced out along a path curling through the egg’s interior, all designed to inspire budding 21st-century
Darwins.

Laurie has never shown a huge inclination for science at school, but something about the Cocoon was compelling — not least the chance to look at the faithful interactive screen versions of some of the museum’s treasured books of specimens such as butterflies.

None quite matches the blood-curdling delight of the roaring T-Rex model in the dinosaur galleries, of course. But then once your children grow out of being frightened by old Rexie, the museum struggles to maintain an appeal for older kids. Cocoon could win them back and inspire a few budding scientists too.

Darwin Centre
Natural History Museum