Urbis

I really wanted to enjoy my afternoon at Urbis museum of Urban life - I’d actually visited their toilets before after a particularly bad salad experience and thought the place looked pretty stylish - but Urbis, unfortunately, is all ambition and little substance.

Guests are welcomed with the explanation, "Urbis is not a museum, it is an interactive experience", and then ushered towards a lift to take you to "the galleries". Museums are for intense education or quiet contemplation - queuing for 20 minutes for the lift, that never arrived, wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind.

Finally inside the galleries, the interactivity takes the form of standing in front of screens to get them working or looking through peepholes at pot plants. There are few games to make the interactivity fun and too little information to make it enriching. Operating the screens at times can be downright awkward - to learn about Jewish immigration you have to drag you foot along the floor! Slide too far you miss out 100 years and by the time you reach the present day you are pressed up against the screen.

Urbis asks questions of why we are so scared of each other, but offers little historical or political background as to why we might be. This lack of info increases the boredom, and at times is downright irresponsible - saying that old ladies shouldn’t be scared of going out because statistically more young men get mugged, totally ignores the complexity of the issue. They say they want to spark a debate, but none of the families I saw were debating, they were just all contorting themselves into yoga positions to get the screens to work.

But - it does have a fantastic gift shop, with an imaginative range of arty crockery and jewellery. Also the temporary art exhibits were an exciting treat for my cynical eyes.

I did learn something though - when I blew my nose in Wagamama later that week, I remembered that the Japanese find it incredibly rude. So it wasn’t a totally wasted experience!

Urbis is free with temporary exhibits £5/£3.50 and it’s next to Victoria Station.
Open all week 10-6.

Urbis
Cathedral Gardens
Manchester
M4 3BG
tel: 0161 907 9099