The story of W5
W5 opened on 31 March 2001 as part of the Odyssey, Belfast's Landmark Millennium Project. The wider Odyssey complex, conceived in the 1990s and built on the former Sirocco and harbour lands at Queen's Quay, brought together an arena, a cinema, leisure venues and a dedicated science centre under one roof on the east bank of the River Lagan.
The science centre took its name from the five questions of enquiry, who, what, where, when and why, and was designed around interactivity from the start. Rather than display cases, it filled its floors with exhibits visitors operate themselves, a model borrowed from the hands-on science centres that had grown popular through the 1990s.
For its first decade W5 was a subsidiary of National Museums Northern Ireland. On 31 March 2012 it transferred to the Odyssey Trust Company, the charitable body that owns and runs the wider complex, and it has operated under the Trust ever since.
In 2013 W5 added Climbit, billed as the largest Luckey Climber in Europe, letting children climb up to twelve metres inside the building. The centre has continued to refresh its zones and shows, but the core idea, science you reach out and touch, has stayed the same since the doors first opened.