We opened our doors on 17 October for a day of art and science, as part of The Big Draw festival.
This year’s Royal Society Big Draw event celebrated the 350th anniversary of Micrographia, Robert Hooke’s seminal text of microscopic observations. Our free, family-friendly day featured talks, workshops and activities on the theme of microscopy.
Activities on the day
- Try your hand at microscopy at one of our drop in workshops run by The Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge.
- Get creative in our children’s area, complete with hands on activities and drawing materials.
- Take a crash course in illustration with our resident illustrator for the day, Mell Fisher.
- Learn about historic engraving techniques in a live demonstration with expert copperplate engraver Ad Stijnman.
- Explore centuries-old scientific illustrations in the Royal Society’s Micrographia exhibition - Seeing closer: 350 years of microscopy.
- Draw a DNA molecule and see a Next Generation DNA sequencing machine provided by Illumina.
- Attend one of our free talks: A new visible world: Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, Watching molecules: Microscopy in the 21st century and Seeing closer: Looking inside bacteria.
- Make your own smartphone microscope.
- Screen-print a personalised tote bag to take home.
Online competition
If you can't attend in person, you can still get your hands on a special Royal Society 'zoom box' and make your own microscope.
Simply draw a microscopic object and share the picture with us on Twitter.
This event was organised in association with the AHRC-funded project ‘Making Visible: The visual and graphic practices of the early Royal Society'.
