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Britain’s museums hold a plethora of weird and wonderful treasures. Pay any of them a visit and you might come across an old showman’s wagon, Churchill’s baby rattle, an Inuit kayak, a humungous sperm whale skeleton, a Victorian amputation kit or medieval suits of armour. But a museum needs more than a fascinating collection of artefacts. The best museums out there are ones that are as entertaining as they are educational.
And those are exactly the kind of venues that Time Out has put on our brand new ranking of the UK’s greatest museums. We’ve already told you all about the bizarre but utterly charming Crab Museum, which scooped up first place. Now, it’s time to deep dive into second place: the ‘lavishly interactive’ Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum.
Thinktank was nominated for the list by Time Out’s theatre and kids editor Andrzej Lukowski. He said that the attraction is ‘vastly more entertainingly laid out, with much more interactive stuff (that actually still works) than London’s Science Museum’.
The museum does have an entry fee (£18.95-£21.95 for adults and £9.95-£12.95 for kids), but you get plenty of bang for your buck. It’s especially great for keeping your little’uns happily occupied – the interactive exhibits are so fun they’ll barely realise they’re learning something – but it offers adults a good time, too.
There’s the outdoor Science Garden with 30 hands-on exhibits educating visitors on stuff like renewable energy, mechanics and engineering (including a giant human-sized hamster wheel). For under-eights, there’s MiniBrum, a soft, padded ‘city’ where they can roleplay building homes, hairdressing, selling vegetables, taking care of poorly pets and fixing car engines. And for all things astronomical, step inside Thinktank’s 4K Planetarium. Shows take you all over the universe and also cover things like the human body or the darkest depths of the ocean.
Elsewhere in Thinktank, visitors will come across an enormous triceratops skull, games consoles from the 1980s, the mighty Smethwick Engine (the oldest working steam engine in the world) and iconic Spitfire and Hurricane aircraft from WW2.
🏛️ Check out Time Out’s full guide to Britain’s best museums in 2026 here.
And explore more of the best things to do in Birmingham here.
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