2026 marked 70 years since the very first Eurovision Song Contest, and so the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford is holding a special exhibition called Setting the Stage. I visited a couple of weeks ago, along with our ten-year-old and some friends from university.
Setting the Stage spans two floors, taking up both of the museum’s temporary exhibition spaces, so it’s a large exhibition. You start off on the first floor, and with it the beginnings of the European Broadcasting Union. Here, there’s a lot about the technical challenges that had to be overcome in the 1950s to be able to broadcast the same TV programme live across multiple countries. A network of broadcast masts had to be set up across the continent to relay TV pictures and sound, and mountain ranges like the Alps provided particular challenges, as did differing TV standards in use in different countries.
Even now, the Eurovision Song Contest is a massive technical undertaking for the host nation, requiring a huge venue, multiple cameras, microphones, staging, lighting and crews to make it all run smoothly.
Fan stories and Objects
The Media Museum has used the Setting the Stage exhibition as an opportunity to put on show various objects related to Eurovision in its collection. It helps that the UK was a recent host of Eurovision, as we hosted the 2023 competition on behalf of the 2022 winners, Ukraine. The exhibition has the outfits worn by the hosts, Julia Sanina, Alesha Dixon and Graham Norton on show, pictured above. There’s also one of the flight attendant uniforms worn by a member of the band Scooch, for their 2007 entry Flying the Flag.
There are also plenty of objects donated by fans, including some home made items. Expect to see more than one star hat based on the one worn by 2007 Ukrainian act Verka Serduchka, for example. It’s similar to an earlier exhibition that I visited in 2014 about Doctor Who which focussed on the show’s relationship with its fans.
Upstairs, you have a chance to do a bit of karaoke with a choice of songs. Thankfully, no-one videoed my rather poor attempt at Oooh Aaah, Just A Little Bit by Gina G.
Setting the Scene is running at the National Science and Media Museum until the 24th January, so you still have some time to go and visit. If you’re a Eurovision fan, then I’d definitely recommend it, but even if you’re not, you may learn quite a bit about what it’s like to put on a massive live show across an entire continent (and Australia, for some reason).
Accessibility
Accessibility at the National Science and Media Museum is good; all floors are level and there’s lift access available. Disabled and Changing Places toilets are provided.
Entry to the museum is free, as it’s home to several national collections, but a £5 per person donation is encouraged. There’s limited pay and display parking behind the museum, and there are apparently two electric vehicle charge points (standard AC, Type 2) here which show up on Google Maps, but not on Zapmap. I personally park at the Broadway shopping centre and walk across. The museum is only a short walk from both Bradford Interchange and Bradford Forster Square railway stations and indeed we visited by train on this occasion.
