Wonderlab: The Equinor Gallery at Science Museum

Wonderlab is the anti-formal venue hire. Fifty interactive exhibits across seven zones, a Chemistry Bar serving live experiments to order, a giant Tesla coil producing actual lightning, a three-storey slide, and explosive live science shows performed by the museum’s team of Explainers. Four hundred standing or 200 seated for dinner — but describing the capacity in conventional terms understates what happens here. The gallery doesn’t host events in the traditional sense. It becomes the event. Guests don’t stand around waiting for the programme to start. They interact with real scientific phenomena, watch demonstrations at the Chemistry Bar, and move through zones that each offer something different. The engagement is immediate, physical, and genuinely entertaining in a way that passive venue experiences — cocktails and conversation with a backdrop — simply aren’t. Seven distinct zones provide natural flow and variety, meaning event producers don’t need to manufacture separate areas or activity stations. The gallery’s architecture handles zoning inherently.

Christmas Parties and Corporate Celebrations at the Science Museum’s Wonderlab

Christmas parties are a core use case and one of the gallery’s strongest formats. The interactive exhibits mean groups are entertained from the moment they arrive. No DJ required for the first two hours. No structured icebreakers. No forced networking activities. The gallery does the social work that event planners usually need to engineer through performers, entertainment hires, and carefully managed programming. Corporate drinks receptions and client networking events benefit from the same dynamic. The exhibits create shared experiences that generate conversation naturally — guests bond over a live Chemistry Bar experiment or a Tesla coil demonstration in ways that cocktail-and-canapé receptions rarely achieve. Company celebrations, product launches wanting approachable energy rather than formal gravitas, and organisations hosting family-inclusive corporate events all find a format that works across age groups and audience types without any element of the evening feeling like a compromise. Bar and Bat Mitzvahs are a strong fit — the gallery engages young guests and adults with equal effectiveness, and the celebratory atmosphere is built into the space rather than imposed on it by entertainment programming.

VIP Dinner Beneath the Orrery at the Science Museum

The giant interactive orrery — a mechanical model of the solar system — creates a canopy of stars above a 32-cover VIP dining table. It’s one of the most intimate and distinctive private dining settings in London, and it exists within a gallery that otherwise handles 400 for a reception. The contrast between the scale of the gallery and the intimacy of the orrery dinner is striking and deliberate — an exclusive experience within a larger space that feels like discovery rather than segregation. The Chemistry Bar serves live experiments alongside drinks. The Tesla coil delivers lightning demonstrations that stop conversation across the gallery. Live science shows, performed by the museum’s Explainers, add curated entertainment provided by the venue itself — no external performer booking, no additional entertainment budget, no coordination with third-party suppliers required. The entertainment is part of the hire.

Hiring the Science Museum’s Wonderlab Gallery

Evening hire only. Accredited suppliers manage catering and production. The alcohol licence runs until 23:00 with extension available. Wonderlab can be included in full museum exclusive hire on limited dates, but it works exceptionally well as a standalone hire for events where the venue’s personality is the point rather than the backdrop. The gallery’s unique positioning within the Science Museum portfolio makes it one of the few spaces in London where the event format — interactive, immersive, hands-on — is fundamentally different from every other option on a planner’s shortlist. It’s not a better version of a standard drinks reception. It’s a different category of experience entirely.