EXPLORATION, WILDLIFE, ADVENTURE IN 2019 FESTIVAL
There’s an outdoor strand in this year’s programme, going from pole to pole, with Central Asia also to the fore.
FORAGING EVENTS
It’s fresh, it’s nutritious, and it’s free! The benefits of foraging are becoming realised, doing what generations of people have done, finding food in the wild …
PROGRAMME 2019
There are more than 70 events, from outer space to Scapa Flow, satellites to seaweed, from hydrogen to the hyperloop, the Silk Roads to the Stoor Worm …
FOOD EVENTS
There’s plenty of opportunities to sample local fare, in daily lunches and in special events like a talk and tea in the 17th-century Skaill House …
ABOUT ORKNEY
“Those soft green hills, the ledged sea-cliffs, the shallow lochs, those curving sweeps of sand… and much of the story goes back around 390 million years, to a time …”
EXHIBITIONS
“From Orkney Nature to Murdoch Mackenzie’s beautifully detailed Orkney sea charts, from Scapa Flow’s history and marine life to sea forms and soundworks …”
The programme for this year is almost complete and we’ve started to post it up here, with much of it now in place and the rest to follow shortly.
It’s a very varied programme and we had so many interesting ideas and offers that it took some time to build them all together, but all has gone well and we are looking forward to highlighting the events and people.
After the programme has been posted up, tickets will follow in mid-July.
The dates for this year’s Festival are 5-11 September 2019.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first walk on the Moon, and we’ll have several events focusing on space exploration.
It’s also the 100th anniversary of the journey to West Africa that launched Albert Einstein as a household name across the world. The journey was made by Sir Arthur Eddington to measure the Sun’s bending of light from a star, which required a total eclipse of the Sun, and the island of Principe was on the eclipse’s path. We’ll tell the story and feature various astronomy events and activities.
We’ll also be enjoying some of Orkney’s countryside and shores, as it’s the 60th anniversary of the founding of Orkney Field Club, and also the start of a new Scotland-wide initiative – a Foraging Fortnight with Orkney among the five regions taking the lead.
This will give us an added dimension, including outings and workshops, talks on traditional medicines and modern insights, an evening of Neolithic food and a variety of other events which will be highlighted in the programme.
With the varied mix of topics, this year’s programme is looking fuller than ever, with topics ranging from the frontiers of genetics to plant-hunting in Central Asia, from the story of Newton’s glass prisms to the search for Darwin’s predecessors, from measuring the Pyramids to making modern maps, and from deep digitality to the hyperloop.
We’re aiming to post the programme online here through the week beginning Monday 24 June.
Some of the events will have final details to come, and we’ll allow time for this before putting tickets online in the week beginning Monday 8 July.
We will keep updates coming here, and also on Facebook.
HIGHLIGHTS ON VIDEO
We have video highlights from previous years to enjoy. There is Irish music, Highland traditional medicine, the story of ‘Big Bill and the Guns of Alamein’, and memories of the childhood of Prof. Ron Drever, who did so much to make possible the detection of gravitational waves.
FRONTIERS MAGAZINE
You’ll find more in our online magazine. It highlights science and people, with stories of ideas, adventures and exploring new territory, past and present…
OISF SHOP
Music for Maxwell, in classical and style, songs from Mr Boom, postcards of John Rae and other famous Orcadians, badges to wear with a smile …
