High-tech museum unites Belfast community

At the W5 Museum in Northern Ireland, Catholic and Protestant kids jointly can learn how clouds are formed

From Rick Lockridge
CNN Technology Correspondent

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- One doesn't usually think of technology as a fix for social problems. But in Belfast, a dazzling, high-tech museum has been built with the idea that it will bring a divided community together.

Until recently the sight would have seemed impossible in Northern Ireland: blue-clad Protestant schoolchildren and their green-clad Catholic counterparts, playing and learning together at a shining new science and technology museum.

Belfast, the epicenter of Northern Ireland's 20th century troubles, has become a city on the rise since the Good Friday peace accords were signed three years ago.

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The plazas are full of shoppers. Construction cranes abound. And at the center of the renaissance is W5, the WhoWhatWhenWhereWhy Museum.

Funded by the U.K.'s Landmark Millennium Project, W5 is Belfast's $40 million statement about the kind of city it wants to be.

"I think this is very much part of Northern Ireland, putting a new face to the future," said Sally Montgomery, W5's director.

Inspiring curiosity, collaboration

The exhibits are designed to inspire curiosity and teach children teamwork and togetherness

Each exhibit at W5 is meant to inspire curiosity, like the laser harp with strings made of light. And many exhibits also intend to inspire teamwork and togetherness, like the tug-of-war device that teaches how pulleys and levers can enable a few lasses to beat several much stronger lads.

Visitors often must collaborate to complete a task, which is no accident.

"We are just using science as an excuse, really," said Lyn Wood, an exhibit designer.

Young visitors on a recent morning learned how to build robots and racecars. They learned how lie detectors work, what sound waves look like, and how clouds are formed.

"It's clearly a place everybody can come," Montgomery said.

Built at the end of a shipyard, the W5 is part of an arena-and-shopping complex called the "Odyssey," perhaps in recognition of the long, dangerous journey this city has undertaken and has yet to complete.