The Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie is a public corporation and cultural centre in Paris coming under the direction of the French Ministry of Research and Technology. Its objective is to make scientific and technical culture accessible to all. It creates and markets a range of hands-on educational packages which correspond to the main exhibition themes throughout the year and may be bought or hired to contribute to cultural or teaching programmes. Its cultural engineering department also functions as a design centre for the conceptualization and organization of outside scientific and industrial culture developments, and provides aid, training and operating assistance to outside projects.