Brighton Luminarium

Visitor Popularity

The Lewes STEM Festival of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths in 2018. 1,000 people attended the 4-hour event held in the Lewes Town Hall.

Stargazing Live Sussex 2017 held at the University of Sussex, with an audience waiting for the start of a musical theatre performance about science.

Over 20 million people visit UK science centres each year, and they are popular with all ages and social economic groups (example attendance figures can be seen in the table below). Visitors to the Brighton Luminarium will predominantly consist of the following audiences:

School & college groups, visiting to take part in syllabus-linked activities.
Local people and families who live in and around Brighton.
Local, national and international tourists who are visiting Brighton and the surrounding areas.

School groups are frequent visitors to science centres, which offer educational programmes that support the teaching of the school science curriculum. Science centres inspire visitors with a sense of wonder, encouraging students into further study of science and technology subjects through the use of novel demonstrations and activities, often using specialist equipment that is rarely available in schools (such as expensive thermal cameras).

Currently, the nearest public science centres to Brighton are:

The Observatory Science Centre, Herstmonceux, 22 miles east of Brighton.
The South Downs planetarium, a small science centre in Chichester, 28 miles west of Brighton featuring a mechanical planetarium from the 1970’s.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, 45 miles to the north.
The Winchester Science Centre, 50 miles west.

Note that both the Royal Observatory Greenwich and the Winchester science centres have a large digital planetarium.

Details of selected UK Science centres and planetaria, with data taken from annual reports that are publicly available from the Companies House website. Note how long these science centres have been operating for, confirming the long-term financial viability of such ventures.
Attraction / Science Centre	Opening year	Total visitor numbers (of which School groups)	Year figures valid for
Observatory Science Centre, Herstmonceux, Sussex	1995	69,000	2019
Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London (figures for the planetarium only)	1953 (2007 major renovation)	243,000 (42,000)	2018/19
Winchester Science Centre	2002/8	170,000 (40,000)	2019/20
We the Curious, Bristol	2000	217,000 (54,000)	2019/20
National Space Centre, Leicester	2001	327,000	2019
Techniquest, Cardiff	1986	143,000 (29,000)	2019/20
Life Science Centre, Newcastle	2000	231,000 (37,000)	2019/20