An all-night sleepover in a museum isn't that unusual. But the Natural History Museum's forthcoming "Dino Snores" sleepover has a twist: it's strictly for adults only. "It's our most requested event," Andy Glynn, visitor events manager at the Natural History Museum told Wired.co.uk. "We've been running the children's one for about two-and-a-half years and every time we promote it people ask, 'Do I really have to come with children?'"
Two hundred adults will attend the night, all of whom will set up camp in the iconic lobby of the museum alongside Dippy, the room-sized diplodicus (pictured). "It's a sophisticated night really," says Glynn. "When the guests arrive they'll set up their camps and then go to the restaurant for a three-course dinner."
The rest of the night will involve an array of adults-only topics including insect sex, grisly staged crime scene investigations, life drawing classes, horror movie screenings and edible bug tasting sessions. "At an event last year we served a three-course tasting menu of edible insects," says Glynn. "We had three experts talking about whether they were a solution to food security issues around the world and people keep emailing in now a year later asking if we'll be doing another insect tasting event, so that's what we're doing. It's probably our second most requested even after the sleepover for adults."
Erica McAlister, an entomologist at the museum, will highlight the brutal sex lives of insects as part of a science show taking place on the night. Some wholesome topics forming part of this include: "traumatic insemination, where male insects stick their genitals into the female insects wherever they can; insects with enormous sperm; males who have developed body parts that females can nibble on while they have sex; and honey bee mating rituals, in which the male loses its penis when mating and which then acts as a plug in the female".
Fun with crime scenes and ghosts
Heather Bonney is a forensic anthropologist at the Natural History Museum, and the only person to hold such a role within a British museum. She is regularly called upon by the police to help identify human remains when they're discovered under demolished buildings, for example.
Bonney says her hands-on event will draw on most of the forensic practices she uses for her job. "We're going to have this scenario where there's been a brutal murder in the museum, where the body wasn't found for a while," she said of her crime scene portion of the night. "We're going to essentially do a post-mortem on those remains to find out who they are and we're going to show people the exact techniques we'd use in this scenario. "It's going to be grisly. We've got some wonderful photos that we set up from our last Crime Scene Live event, where we went to a butcher and got some brains, some eyeballs, some really nasty bits for the staged versions of a murder scene."
The Natural History Museum holds about 20,000 sets of human remains in its basement, which also happens to have been used as a communications bunker during World War II. Such colourful aspects of the Museum's character offered a chance for Dino Snores to conform to a more traditional sleepover pastime than analysing corpses and eating insects: telling ghost stories. "Clementine Wade will host a quiz and the insect tasting session," said Glynn, "and she'll be doing bedtime ghost stories about the museum at 2:30am. We've also got a life drawing session in the Darwin centre, so there'll be a male model and a female model and there'll be a masterclass with top tips on how to draw the human body, taking place at midnight. Finally, stand-up comedian Tom Allen is going to be doing a 50-minute set in our cafe."
More flexible
Dino Snores for Grownups is smaller than its child-friendly counterpart, and aims to be a more flexible night. "It's a lot more free," explains Glynn. "The way it's structured is that at the end of each activity people can just decide where they want to go next.
If they want to do a whole night of science-related activities, they can. Or they can opt out of that and go and see some comedy, wander the exhibitions and have a drink in the bar. "The kid's one is a lot more structured because we want to keep them all together. There are learning objectives within the children's event, too, [and] the educational activities are put together by our learning department so that we know we're teaching them stuff that's relevant to their curriculum".
This event is a pilot to see how an adults-only version of Dino Snores performs, and to make sure it meets the expectations adults have of such a night -- the Museum has made a point of highlighting that the evening is not suitable for stag or hen parties. As such, future sleepovers may turn out to follow a different course to the monthly kid's version, based on feedback. Glynn was hopeful that it could at least become a semi-regular event, if successful, however.
He said: "I think if this one works we could maybe think about doing it quarterly perhaps."
Dino Snores for Grown-ups takes place on 9 June, 2012, and costs £175 per person, or £160 for Natural History Museum members.
If you go along, you might be able to find out what Glynn was referring to when he told us: "I came out of a meeting with [Erica Allister, entomologist] with a whole page of notes about giant cricket testicles."
Don't worry -- she was probably just talking about the evening's menu.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
