Discover Children's Story Centre Information

Discover Children's Story Centre is a place where children and their families can enjoy playing, learning and making up stories together. Discover is the UK’s first Story Centre for children aged 0-11 and their families. Our aim is to create a love of language, literature and stories. At the heart of the centre, our purpose-built Story World and Story Garden are creative play spaces designed to inspire children’s curiosity and imagination. Our team of dedicated Story Builders guide children and families through the space and encourage them to create their own stories for Hootah, our resident baby space alien, to send back to his planet Squiggly Diggly, which has run out of imagination. Changing once every six months to a year, our interactive exhibitions immerse families in the world of their favourite authors, from Oliver Jeffers to Michael Rosen and Dr. Seuss. Throughout the year we invite much-loved and up-and-coming authors, illustrators, poets, musicians, artists and storytellers to run exciting workshops and take part in our annual The Big Write Children’s Literature Festival. We want to help improve reading, writing, speaking and listening skills for children in fun and imaginative ways. We also work with schools, libraries and in the local community. Last year over, 100,000 children and adults visited and worked with Discover. In 2012 we were shortlisted for a new International Children’s Museum award. In May 2011 we won a Museums and Heritage Award for Excellence. We have also been awarded the Visitor Attraction Quality Assurance marque from Visit Britain and the Learning Outside the Classroom kitemark. Time Out voted Discover one of London’s top five family days out, and named our bookshop as one of the top five children’s bookshops in London. In 2016 we underwent a major refurbishment to our building, expanding our Story World and creating a new Storytelling space and café.