Bolton escape room holding educational day pilot

Escape Nation in The Vaults at Market Place is holding a pilot to test a new programme out for schoolchildren.

The programme will involve bringing schools in, with children taking it in turns doing an educational escape room, visiting an exhibition at Bolton Museum and partaking in an interactive workshop.

Called "curriculum enhancement workshops", these educational days are planned to fully start in September.

James Lomax, CEO of Escape Nation and Clever Cogz, said: “We’re going to bring schools into Bolton, say 60 children. 20 will be in an interactive workshop with staff in a live classroom experience.

“Twenty children will go to our Egyptian escape room, which helps with teamworking skills, problem solving and mental health.

"The other 20 people will go to the new Egyptian exhibition in the museum and they’ll cycle round during the day.”

“We’ll do the pilot day with the first school, we’ll work out how we want to present it and get some feedback.”

Read more: Escape room coming to Bolton - with a special night just for adults!

James, aged 38, from Walkden, added: “We were originally an education escape room company. The business four years ago was we’d travel around to schools.

“It was an alternative to school trips out to places, we’d go to them.

“Now it’s more of a permanent escape room. The way we approach it is different.”

Escape Nation in The Vaults

Another plan for these escape rooms is to take a different approach to networking for businesses.

James said: “I’m a big fan of networking. My personal opinion is that current networking is old and saturated.

“People can work within the V5 are escape room breakaway area to encourage businesses to think outside the box.

“Doing an escape room people might find it a new and fun way of networking.

“You’d find yourself in an escape room with someone you don’t know, so it’s a good way of getting to know each other.”