The day before the official launch party for Action Replay, Key Stage 2 pupils from Lapage Primary School in Bradford joined us to put our exhibition through its paces. They explored how sport and broadcast technologies have worked together to create the fantastic matches and events we all enjoy on television.
With everyone excited for England and the World Cup semi-final on Wednesday night, we dived straight into our tours of top-notch sporting tech. Coming top of the league were our interactive displays, particularly ‘Be a Presenter’. The brave students who had a go at being a live sports presenter enjoyed trying to keep in time with the autocue, and we all agreed it was exciting to be in front of the camera!
Pupils also had fun with the ‘Weird and Wonderful’ sport footage, guessing what the symbols for different sports were before they watched the films. Everyone decided that cheese rolling was the funniest, and most dangerous, sport—but that just winning a cheese was a bit rubbish!
The students were impressed with the original cameras from the 1936 Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race and the 1948 Olympics. And they were proud to be the first visitors to see the 1948 CPS Emitron camera, which has never been on display before in any museum. They couldn’t believe the batteries to power the equipment weighed a quarter of a ton, especially thinking about how small the batteries in their mobile phones are.
We did a quick poll with the students to see which their favourite sporting mascots were. Coming top of the podium were Wenlock and Mandeville from London 2012, and Izzy the Whatizit from the 1992 Atlanta Olympics. Izzy was one of the most disliked Olympic mascots ever, but the Lapage students said he was ‘funny’ and ‘really colourful’. It’s good to see Izzy has some fans at last!
After a round of photos posing with everyone’s favourite sprinter Usain Bolt and pulling his trademark lightning bolt move, it was time for refreshments before the full-time whistle. When we asked what the pupils enjoyed the most they said ‘everything!’
Sprint down to our game-changing exhibition Action Replay at the National Science and Media Museum—it’s open from tomorrow, Friday 13 July 2018.
