The Eureka! Mersey team are currently working with schools and youth organisations from across the Liverpool City Region (LCR) to ensure that they create a unique attraction that is relevant to the region’s young people.

Eureka! Mersey is being developed through a cutting edge approach to co-creation with local children and young people. It is essential that we listen to, collaborate with and inspire our new audiences and, in order to do this, we have placed co-creation at the heart of our project.

Our approach is building on the well-established and successful methodology developed by Eureka! over many years to ensure that children and young people have a real voice in shaping what we create for them. Every gallery developed for Eureka! in Halifax benefits from the input and opinions of children.

So far, more than 120 young people have been involved in designing exhibition content for Eureka! Mersey working in partnership with key local industry partners including Ørsted, Unilever, Sci-tech Daresbury and Arup, as well as Liverpool John Moores University.

The programme has involved:

• An initial ideas lab in February 2018 which brought together industry experts, academics, teachers and educationalists, cultural institutions and youth organisations to agree the core principles that would guide content development for Eureka! Mersey.
• A ‘match-making’ workshop in September 2018 paired groups of young people with industry and academic partners, according to the areas they wished to explore.
• Young people meeting regularly with scientists, engineers and researchers from our expert partner organisations and with Eureka!’s learning, interpretation and design experts, to explore consider ideas and design themes.

Real Studios and members of the Eureka! team meet regularly to explore interpretive approaches, storylines and exhibits for Eureka! Mersey in response to the ideas and suggestions generated by children and young people through the co-creation process. Outline ideas are further developed and put back in front of our co-creators for further discussion and input.

We recognise and celebrate the enormous commitment and dedication all our partners have shown to the project, and thank them for their enthusiasm and support!