Brazen Bus Tour 1

A minibus tour of three Bristol companies that build physical technology, run as part of techSPARK's Brazen festival. Roughly half an hour inside each of Open Bionics, WASE and Smartbox. The organisers put the range as bionic arms through to compact fusion reactors, and the point is to see the labs and talk to the people who work in them.

Itinerary: 9:30 Open Bionics (BS1 2NB), 10:10 WASE (BS5 0SP), 11:05 Smartbox (BS1 5PU), ending at 11:30. The bus starts at Open Bionics and finishes at Smartbox rather than returning, so plan the journey on from BS1 5PU. Places are limited and two further identical tours run later the same day.

Why go: working labs are not usually open to visitors, and this is the quickest way to see what Bristol actually manufactures. Best for engineers, hardware founders and anyone hiring into deep tech.