Britain's most popular science festival is Manchester Science Festival.

Over 100,000 people flocked to the 2009 Manchester Science Festival – making it the most popular event of its type in the UK.

Manchester Science Festival is one of the UK’s newest and freshest science festivals with last year’s event attendance increasing from 65,691 in 2008 to 102,288.

“Science festivals like Manchester's are fantastic at putting science in front of the widest possible audience. They convey the wonder and importance of science and engineering to people at all ages.” Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson

Visitors came from the Greater Manchester region, the UK and overseas to enjoy a total of 317 events, exhibitions, school workshops and community projects created by 57 organisations.

Events were held in 48 public, cultural, community, academic, educational, social, indoors and outdoors locations.

In total, 43,112 people attended events, 58,374 visited exhibitions and 802 took part in the schools programme.

The majority of events were free and many were fully booked, including;

• Dr Bunhead's crash test jelly babies - Manchester Central
• The Luck Factor with Richard Wiseman - MOSI
• Nick Arnold : The Horrible Science Show – Zion Arts Centre
• Childhood obesity debate – John Rylands Library
• Geek girl dinner - Sweet Mandarin restaurant
• Human evolution talk by Steve Jones – Bolton Museum
• Blood, vampires and science debate and film – Cornerhouse
• Robot hack day – MadLab

Natalie Ireland, Festival Director, said: “Manchester is a great science city, boasting legendary figures like Rutherford and Turing, so it’s only right that it has a great science festival for everyone to enjoy and participate in.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with the attendance figures and it’s a great credit to everyone involved in the Festival, many of whom gave up hours of their time to help run events.

“Huge thanks must also go to our partner organisations and our funders, whose support allowed us to run a very successful and enjoyable week of events.

“We’re certainly not resting on our laurels and we are already busy planning our programme for Manchester Science Festival 2010, which promises to be bigger and better than ever.

“We’re always keen to get feedback and improve what we offer, and I would encourage anyone with ideas and suggestions for future Festivals to get in touch.”

The 2009 Festival was supported by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), MOSI and Siemens.

Manchester Science Festival 2010 will take place from Saturday 23 to Sunday 31 October. Be there.