Build your own videogame, learn Minecraft survival skills, or walk around in a virtual reality story

QUAD in Derby is offering an answer to half-term boredom with a string of family friendly films and workshops taking place during the February half-term break.

■ ■ On Monday, February 17, there’s Quad’s Make and Take Day, a family-friendly artist-led creative session suitable for families with children of all ages.

Choose from a range of craft materials to make whatever you want and take it away afterwards. The drop-in sessions are free and take place from 11am until 4pm.

■ ■ KidsQUAD: Build your own Video Game workshop is a chance for 7-11 year-olds to learn how to design and build a video game that can be played online at home. The workshop takes place on Monday, February 17, from 10.30am to 3pm and costs £25. Booking is recommended and a packed lunch required.

■ ■ Young people aged 8-16 years-old are invited to MinecraftLAB on Wednesday, February 19, from 11am until 4pm for fun creative sessions focused around the blockbuilding game. Join QUAD’s Minecraft team for a day of ‘Survival’, Minecraft’s original game mode where players must collect resources, build structures, battle mobs, manage hunger, and explore the world in order to survive. Limited places remain so pre-book and take along a packed lunch. Places cost £22.50 per person.

■ ■Teardown! Reimagine! is an animation workshop with UK artists Anna BuntingBranch and Aliyah Hussain to explore the themes in QUAD’s new digital exhibition ‘Warm Worlds and Otherwise’ by deconstructing machines to create animated characters, sounds and new worlds. Suitable for ages eight and above, the free workshop runs on Saturday, February 22, from 1:30pm to 4:00pm. Booking is essential.

■ ■ QUAD’s VR Day for ages 8 and over explores the digital world of virtual reality (VR), including a VR Storyroom ‘The Lift’; decision making sci-fi experiment ‘Playing

God’, ‘Beat Saber’ competition, plus creative VR experience ‘Tilt Brush’.

The Lift is a chance to travel through time and space to meet a long extinct dinosaur or be transported back to the trenches of the First World War to hear the stories of the Empire’s forgotten soldiers.

This walkaround VR Storyroom uses a headset for you to explore the past.

Playing God is an interactive VR thought experiment that lets you imagine you are the captain of a space station, a space station suddenly presented with a humanitarian crisis.

The third storyroom, Beat Saber is a virtual reality rhythm game where the player uses light sabers to slice blocks that represent musical beats.

VR Day is on Friday, February 21, from 11am to 4pm. The drop-in day is free apart from the Beat Saber sessions which can be booked in advance or on the day and cost £4 per 10 minute session. www.vr-play.co. uk/

■ ■In QUAD Cinemas, Cine Kids: Spies In Disguise will be showing daily from Saturday, February 15, until Sunday, February 23. All tickets are £4 for Cine Kids Club members (which includes the whole family and their guests). Membership is free to families with children under sixteen.