Orkney Camera Club respond each year to the Festival theme, and this year had an even bigger challenge – to do so online; and they have responded in splendid style. Their exhibition Orkney’s Coastal Waters is a delight, as you can see by going to it on the Artsteps site.
The exhibition ‘Ian Scott – a retrospective’ can be seen online at the Artsteps site. Online exhibitions use a lot of computer memory, so it is best to make sure first that all other applications are shut down, and it can take a little time to load. To start with, just clicking on an image is the simplest way around, moving from each one to its neighbour, and then furthermore possibilities can be found.
Katy Firth in association with Stromness Museum has put together an exhibition of 360 degree photospheres of a visit to the island. With each of the images, you can turn it round a full 360 degrees, to see the full range of views from your vantage point. You can go direct to the exhibition, and she is also going to provide online guidance as to how to make the best use of it.
Research students at Heriot-Watt University’s International Centre for Island Technology give short talks on their work in topics like marine resources – and an opportunity to enjoy the view over Stromness harbour!
An opportunity to learn the basic elements of the art, as artist Lin Chau leads you through the process of mould and deckle making, preparing plant pulp fibre, pulling a sheet and couching it, then pressing the paper. All age groups are welcome, with no prior experience required, but numbers are limited, so booking is essential. The booking fee of £15 includes a starter pack (UK delivery only) with a simple meshed frame, 4 different kinds of plant fibre, a packet of Orkney native wild flower seeds, some pressed flowers, and 4 pieces of J-cloths. You will need some home items as well.
Plan your own Orkney lunch in advance from our downloadable recipe brochure, with links to Orkney suppliers. Then at 1 o’clock tune in to the Science Festival YouTube channel to hear St Andrews University researcher Dr Monica Arso-Civil describe her studies of Orkney’s harbour seal population. Chef Paul Doull from the Foveran shows how to cook scallops with some foraged ingredients, including seaweed and chickweed, and Eric Walker tells how to find the Triangle and the Plough in the night sky. They’ll round off at 1.15 pm and join us for discussion around one of our online tables.
Direct from the Moon, there’s now a chance, with Mr Boom to sing and dance!
It can be lying rusted in a field or shed ... and then in the skilled hands of a member of Orkney Vintage Club it can after much time and care become a loving-restored car, motorbike, tractor or engine. Club members invite you in to see and hear about examples of restoration, and to see some of them in action. Details of some examples to come.
A beaver-chewed timber from North America, a sea heart from the rainforests of the southern Caribbean. A skate’s egg case, a lump of paraffin wax, and a lobster creel tag from Newfoundland. Martin Gray, who runs the Orkney Beachcombing page, describes the wealth of treasures that wash up on an Orkney shore and the searching and foraging quest that has taken Orcadians to the shore since Neolithic times and before.
Are science and theology opposites? Not so, said the Orkney-born theologian John Oman: they face the same world, but in different ways. His theology puts in a radically new foundation for its relation to science, subordinating authority and tradition to personal experience. His great-great-niece Patricia Long tells the story of his life, and Howie Firth outlines his ideas, to argue that John Oman is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.
with a special Festival presentation
We go live to Ljubljana where Dr Edward Kobal of the Slovenian Science Foundation takes a look at the science of wine, and how land and soil and air all play a part, from the high plateau of the Karst to the shores of the Adriatic Sea.
Orkney storyteller Tom Muir tells a selkie story from North Ronaldsay. Katarina Juvančič sings The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry, accompanied by guitarist Dejan Lapanja, and then a song in similar mood about a Slovenian girl taken away by a water-sprite. Anne Sinclair from Fair Isle describes some of the island’s shipwrecks and introduces a song from the group Fridarey.
The old selkie story found in Orkney and elsewhere around the coast of the British Isles tells of shapeshifting between the human and natural worlds, in the uncertain boundary world of the shore. This performance piece by artist Selena S Kuzman, specially created for the Year of Coasts and Waters, merges in a poetic way the folk stories of the selkie people with the transformation of waste materials and our deep connection with the sea and the land.
Round off the day with the atmosphere of The Reel, and the opportunity to take a break and join a table to meet up with old and new friends and exchange news, and some of the speakers from events as well.
A science festival has a radical role in developing a creative climate for a region. Here is the story of how it began, and how Orkney was involved from an early stage in the concept.
