Inside the Millennium Dome

Greenwich, 24 February 1998

Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, today unveiled the first official glimpses of what will be inside the Millennium Dome. Seven of the thirteen themed exhibitions are revealed.

The New Millennium Experience Company unveiled the plans, describing them as "the most ambitious and exciting program of millennium celebrations in the world". The exhibitions "will show a Britain which is embracing the millennium with optimism". The slogan chosen for the Dome is "Time to Make a Difference" "the brand for the new millennium".

Seven pavilions were announced today:

• The Body Zone: a human figure which will include a 170ft high viewpoint and an exhibition centre in its right leg;
• Spirit Level: "a moment of peace and reflection"
• The Learning Curve: focusing on learning as a life-long process
• Licensed to Skill: about finding hidden skills to match to a new world of work;
• Serious Play: "How leisure can re-activate your life";
• Living Island: "Choose how to protect your environment day-by-day";
• Dreamscape, "Dream, imagine, and return refreshed".

Visitors are invited to: "Enter the Dome and prepare to be entertained, intrigued and inspired."   It is "a vision of the future, where you can explore the world of 2000 and beyond."

At the centre of the pavilions will be a circular piazza where live performances designed by Mark Fisher, who has worked with The Rolling Stones and U2, will play up to six shows a day, each with an audience of up to 10,000 people.  This is in addition to shows in Baby Dome which will be built next door, a concert space capable of holding 6,000 people.

As well as the exhibitions, there will be around 30 different catering outlets from full-scale restaurants and cafes to simple stalls. Part will be an international food court.

There will also be around 20 shops selling souvenirs and other goods.

The Dome will have two operating sessions a day, each with a maximum capacity of 35,000 people. Organisers are expecting around 12 million visitors to the Dome during 2000, its sole year of operation. The New Millennium Experience is holding back many details of the pavilions. "We want some surprises," said a spokesman. However, the details of the exhibitions released today include:

The Body Zone

This will consist of a sitting human figure taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Visitors will enter on a walkway through the back into "an empty, cathedral-like space" through which they will travel upwards in a lift to a 360-degree observation platform in the head.

From here, they will be able to look out over the whole area of the Dome.

Descending, visitors will enter the outstretched right leg on a travelator, or moving pavement, being conveyed through an exhibition the organisers describe as being interactive about the human body.

It is said that the statue will be covered with photographs of children; maybe as many as a million of them.  Next to the adult statue will be a baby child into which visitors will also be able to gain access.

Its building blocks, however, will contain an exhibition based around the themes of physical prowess; the limits of human endurance, and how humans represent themselves, which will include exhibits on plastic surgery and cosmetics.

Spirit Level

This is the nearest the exhibition gets to a Christian message. An exhibition which, according to the architects, will "explore symbolically and through specific exhibits the values that underpin our society and how they are expressed through faith and belief."

It recognises Christianity's "formative influence on the history of the West". However, the exhibit will also recognise "the presence in our society of other religious traditions".

The area will also include a garden which will create "the sheltered calm of a Christian monastic cloister, the austerity of Japanese Zen gardens and the formal exuberance of Muslim gardens."

"Dreamscape™"

This zone was to have been called "Dreamscape"  but it violates a pre-registered UK trade-mark of ESP.

A "restful landscape of smooth pebble-shapes strewn across the floor of the Dome,"  "Visitors will take their seats in boats designed as 16-seater beds, floating along a river of dreams, through environments intended to surprise, excite and entertain, setting their minds free in a way that only dreams can achieve."

"A pink-knuckle ride" will take adults and children "into worlds beyond their wildest dreams." These will include a giant aquarium, and a cityscape.

Serious Play

This contains a moving pavement ride through huge multimedia displays towards the roof of the Dome. This will include virtual reality 3-D objects activated by other visitors. Visitors get the choice of a lift back to the floor, where an exhibition will concentrate on "the future of leisure", including interactive cinema, sport, music, and fashion. If they don't want the lift, they can abseil or slide down, or wear "Spiderman" suits that stick to the walls and climb down.

Licensed to Skill and The Learning Curve

Concentrating on how people learn and exploring possible classrooms of the future that educate children and adults alike. There will also be "virtual reality rides" around Britain to see and feel how people are working, and a gallery gathering young people's views about what the future of work holds. The exhibit will also include a game in which contestants "pit themselves against an unknown task".

Living Island

Looking like a miniature seaside resort with beach, fish and chip stand et al. This is not all  as it seems. In the  funfair, visitors can join games, contests and rides while simultaneously learning what they they can do to make a difference to "our environmental future" through everyday choices.

For full information see the Greenwich 2000: Millennium Dome Zone Section