Project Description
PROGRAMME 2020
This 30th Festival is a new adventure for us as we deliver online, with a big team of helpers joining in to make it possible. The Year of Coasts and Waters runs through the programme, with stories of tidal turbines and Arctic journeys, shipbuilding and shipwrecks, whale songs and selkie stories, and North Ronaldsay’s seaweed-eating sheep. Foraging Fortnight gives us an additional outdoor dimension, with outings to Hoy and Graemsay, and walks along parts of the St Magnus Way.
Topics range from superconductivity to spaceports, ocean plastic to atmospheric pollution, Orkney’s Norse genetic links to the analysis of the finds from the Ness of Brodgar excavation. We find out too how the people of the Neolithic may have been able to build substantial boats to sail to Orkney and beyond. We look back to the 17th-century origins of modern science and hear music for a Winter Queen.
All the events are free, apart from one or two of the workshops where numbers are limited and a ticket includes an equipment pack. Almost all of the events will be streamed through YouTube, for easy access. We will link up on the closing evening with an international islands event and speak to islands worldwide, from Tasmania to St Helena. And wherever you are, you are warmly welcome to join us!