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.
This event has been postponed due to unavoidable circumstances band and we look forward to an opportunity to reschedule.
The little-known Galapagos Islands came to the fore when Charles Darwin’s discoveries there completely changed our views of the living world. Author and photographer Dr Michael Leach has visited many times, and shows pictures of their extraordinary wildlife – giant tortoises and marine iguanas, green turtles and Sally Lightfoot crabs, penguins, sea lions, finches and frigate birds – and tells their story.
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 from St Andrews University researcher Dr James Grecian about changing patterns of marine mammal migration. Tristan Cameron-Harper will give news from his journey north, and Eric Walker will tell us where to find Clusters and Clouds in the night sky. They’ll round off at 1.15 pm and join us for lunch around one of our online tables.
This event has been postponed due to unavoidable circumstances band and we look forward to an opportunity to reschedule.
A newspaper obituary for a 19th-century stone mason led Neil Price on a trail of investigation: from Bristol to Tsarist Russia and a massive harbour development destroyed in the Crimean War. Andrea Price joins as reader for a story that starts with Catherine the Great and features Charles Gordon (later of Khartoum) and the first war to be recorded through the techniques of photography.
It was one of the most significant and complex civil engineering achievements of the 20th century, closing off four fast-flowing tidal channels to form causeways that sealed off the eastern side of the anchorage of Scapa Flow and link today the island communities of Burray and South Ronaldsay with the Orkney mainland. The challenge was taken on by the construction company Balfour Beatty. Civil engineer John Andrew tells the story of how they solved it, and the massive scale of the operation with its quarries and rockworks, cableways and railways.
Islands are in the frontline for challenges of environment and resources – and for finding solutions. The Virtual Island Summit (7-13 September) is this week bringing together islands worldwide to share their experiences and stories of island innovation. We join them live with stories of development projects in several Orkney islands showing how communities can shape energy developments to solve problems.
Join us for music and dancing, and an opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones. There’s music from the Craig Mainland Band in Rousay, with traditional dances for you to try, and new dances from fiddler Lewis Hou of Science Ceilidh. There are studio guests to join in conversation, and breaks when you can sit back and chat with others from near and far.
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.
