Eureka!, the children’s museum in Halifax, is to launch a new interactive music gallery later this month.

SoundSpace, which will open on 20 July, has been designed to enable children aged three to 12 to explore the science behind sound, music and performance.

Groups of children will take a journey to help Orby the Alien explore music and learn about its key elements as well as what roles music plays in performance and society, how it is controlled and how it can influence our emotions.

They will also be able to create their own musical sequences, perform live on stage, mix and sample sounds on virtual DJ Decks and experiment with sound and lighting in a futuristic studio.

The 500sq m gallery is the result of a collaboration between sound artist, Thor McIntyre-Burnie and Dutch exhibition designers, Northern Light CoDesign. It will replace the existing Invent, Create, Communicate gallery on the ground floor.

McIntyre-Burnie said: “This collaboration is an unprecedented step for all involved – no other children’s museum has invited an artist to have creative input into an interpretation strategy on this scale and I am confident that together we will create a truly innovative learning environment.”

Tudor Gwynn, exhibitions manager at Eureka!, said: “Music truly is a universal language. For children, it offers a context for hands-on learning. That’s important because we know that if there is a context that they can grasp, children feel more confident and when they are confident, they learn.”

SoundSpace has received a grant of £117,000 from NESTA’s (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) Learning Programme. The new gallery is also a realisation of one of the key elements of the Creative Minds project – a partnership formed in 2003 between Eureka!, Yorkshire Forward and the Yorkshire Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (YMLAC) – to make the subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) more accessible to children.