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Wild

A new exhibition looking at our relationship with the natural world

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Wild

Will going ‘wild’ help us to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis?

Wild will challenge the way we think about nature, taking you to Wild Places across the world to hear a diverse range of voices, from Aboriginal elders to researchers and community activists. Find out how they’re shaping their environments and looking to wild for a more positive future.

Runs 5 June 2024 – 1 June 2025.

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Plan your visit

Booking

The exhibition is free, with a recommended donation of £5.

We recommend booking before you visit.

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Opening times

Last admissions are 30 minutes before the museum closes.

Plan your visit here:

Opening times and more

Events

Alongside our exhibition, we have an exciting Wild Events programme.

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Wild Events

An exhibition for everyone

Wild is an exhibition for everyone.

Find out more about accessibility in the exhibition:

Accessibility for Wild

About the exhibition

Find out more about Wild and what to expect when you visit our new exhibition.

More about Wild

Wild

How far will you go?

Will going ‘wild’ help us to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis?

Wild explores our relationship with the natural world and looks at how people across the globe are creating, rebuilding and repairing connections with nature.

What fuels our fear of dangers that lurk in the wild? Can ‘wildness’ flourish within a city’s concrete jungle? How do we care for things we can’t see?

Wild will challenge the way we think about nature, taking you to Wild Places across the world to hear a diverse range of voices, from Aboriginal elders to researchers and community activists. Find out how they’re shaping their environments and looking to wild for a more positive future.

Featuring an immersive installation, audio, film and interactive elements, alongside natural history collections and artworks, the exhibition prompts you to notice the biodiversity and heritage of the featured environments while questioning our relationship with the natural world.

Wild also explores how the natural world has traditionally been presented and idealised through Western art, from pastoral scenes to epic landscapes, and representations in popular culture, from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to CBeebies’ Octonauts.

Wild places

An exhibition for everyone

Accessibility for Wild

Exhibition text

The complete text from the exhibition is available for visitors to use while in the exhibition space, in both large print and OpenDyslexic font.

Tactile elements

Wild includes several elements that are accessible by touch.

Wheelchair friendly

Wheelchair accessibility is at the heart of the exhibition’s design. Beyond access to all spaces, this also includes the placement of all text and labels.

A sensory journey

In order to help you plan for your visit. Find out what to expect before you arrive.

Accessibility at the museum

We’ve listened to advocates with lived experience and inclusive features can be found across the building. Find out more:

Accessibility at Manchester Museum

Belonging in Wild

In response to Wild, we have been working with neurodivergent young people and d/Deaf people and artists to investigate their experiences of the natural world. Through a series of creative workshops, new artwork has been created for display in the Wild exhibition.

The project aims to increase our understanding and awareness of how nature is experienced and accessed now by people with lived experience of disability and inspire action and imagination for a more inclusive wild future.

Partners:

  • Venture Arts – an award-winning visual arts organisation working with learning disabled artists.
  • Pinc College – providing creative education for neurodivergent young people.
  • SORD (Social Research with Deaf People) at The University of Manchester – promoting the wellbeing of d/Deaf individuals, families and communities.
  • Manchester Deaf Centre – a hub for inclusion, advocacy, accessibility, support, training and information.

This project is part of the Mindsets + Missions programme, with funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in partnership with Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Artist residency drop-in sessions

Every Wednesday, Venture Arts studio artists, Andrew Johnstone and Emelia Hewitt use the Museum’s Top Floor as a space to explore Belonging in Wild themes and develop their creative work through interactions with the museum’s objects and visitors. Public visitors can visit the Top Floor between 2-3pm to meet the artists on the dates below:

  • 6, 13, 20, 27 November
  • 4, 11 December
  • 8, 15, 22, 29 January
  • 5, 12, 26 February
  • 5, 12, 19, 26 March
  • 2 April
An artwork on the wall within the Wild exhibition at Manchester Museum, which has the words 'feeling nature' alongside illustrations that evoke the natural world.

Wild events

You can find information on all our exhibitions and events here.

Wild Talks

  • Tickets: Free, book tickets.
  • Date: 8 Jun 2024 -26 Apr 2025
  • Location: Kanaris Theatre, Manchester Museum, Oxford Road.

Wild Talks

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Photography credits

Tree in Manchester: Rachel Webster.

Landscape shot of Knepp: Knepp Estate.

Sea squirts and feather stars in Lamlash Bay: copyright Howard Wood & COAST.

Nowanup landscape: Esme Ward.

Wolf in the snow at Yellowstone: NPS:Neal Herbert