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Events for September 28, 2023

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IMPOSSIBLE ENGINEERING?

St Magnus Centre, Palace Road, Kirkwall

Thistle Wind Partners invite you to come along for a play and live experiments about the greatest engineering adventure of our time. The play features three of Scotland’s most exciting theatrical and TV actors: Kit Laveri, Stuart Falconer and Stuart Fenwick. Engineers of history, Archimedes and James Watt, challenge the Goddess of the Wind Zephyra to demonstrate that offshore wind engineering can really work! Can we achieve the next generation of floating turbines? Find out in this family show.

WILD ISLES

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

Richard Shucksmith in Shetland has spent the last three years working on the BBC’s Wild Isles series, broadcast this spring. He shares images and stories, and guidance as well, and speaks about the physical and technical challenges involved, from his lifelong love of photography.

£4 – £6

TREES IN THE PARK

Arcadia Park, Kirkwall

Come for a tour with Paul Green who designed the community park and Bob Mackenzie who came up with the original idea. You’ll see the signs of natural soil restoration and the results of all the community planting efforts, and make your own contribution by planting two trees which will be provided.

£10

FAMILY DAY

Kirkwall Grammar School (KGS)

See the planetarium. Carry out a mission to Mars. Study starlight. Build a mammoth skeleton. Learn how to control robots. See a 2,000-year-old computer model. Find out about offshore wind and tidal power. Explore a kelp forest in virtual reality. Make a cloud chamber. Model a virus ... and much more!

£5 – £9

WORKSHOP: AI ON YOUR PC

Kirkwall Grammar School (KGS)

What is AI, where is it going? Here's an introduction from Dr Matjaž Vidmar of Edinburgh University. This event is now a drop-in activity, part of the Family Day, with no additional charge. It's an opportunity for just about all ages to find out more about AI and to put questions to Matjaž - and some of his intelligent friends!

£8

MADE MANIFEST IN FORM AND NUMBER

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness

Explore mathematical influences on art in the permanent exhibition at the Pier and a visiting exhibition from Dundee. Curator Andrew Parkinson and Kari Adams join Dundee curator Matthew Jarron and mathematician Dr Isobel Falconer from St Andrews University. There’s talks, a tour, and a tea break. Booking essential.

£10

WALK AROUND THE NESS

From Ness of Brodgar public park

Join the director of the Ness of Brodgar excavations, Nick Card, for an off-season walk around the site where this summer’s excavations have just been completed. Hear about the wider landscape around the Ness and the news from this year’s dig, along with some of the particularly interesting finds.

£11

HYDROGEN FUEL CELL OPEN DAY

Kirkwall Pier

Visit EMEC at their hydrogen fuel cell on Kirkwall Pier to learn about hydrogen in Orkney. Tour their H2 infrastructure, meet the experts, and find how they turn electricity generated from tidal turbines into green hydrogen for use for heat, power and transport including the maritime and aviation sectors. Admission free.

THE SCIENCE OF THE SUN

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

The Sun’s heat and light is vital for life on earth – but it also generates ‘space weather’ that can damage satellites and endanger astronauts. Dr Karen Meyer of Dundee University describes the huge temperatures of the Sun’s atmosphere and the massive eruptions of energy that sometimes burst from it; and how mathematics can shed light on some of its mysteries.

£4 – £6

MAESHOWE WALL ART

Maeshowe Visitor Centre, Stenness

Join Cat Martin-Lennie from Historic Environment Scotland to find out about the carvings inside Maeshowe chambered cairn, and have a go at making your own wall art. Explore your creativity through art and self-expression, and continue the Maeshowe tradition!

IMPOSSIBLE ENGINEERING?

St Magnus Centre, Palace Road, Kirkwall

Thistle Wind Partners invite you to come along for a play and live experiments about the greatest engineering adventure of our time. The play features three of Scotland’s most exciting theatrical and TV actors: Kit Laveri, Stuart Falconer and Stuart Fenwick. Engineers of history, Archimedes and James Watt, challenge the Goddess of the Wind Zephyra to demonstrate that offshore wind engineering can really work! Can we achieve the next generation of floating turbines? Find out in this family show.

BUFFET LUNCH OF ORKNEY FARE

Peedie Kirk Hall, Palace Road, Kirkwall

Meet friends old or new and enjoy the best of Orkney cheese, meat, fish and baking. Hear too the announcement of the winners in the wildlife photography competition. The One O’Clock Toast is in memory of the writer Bessie Skea (‘Countrywoman’), born 100 years ago. It is given by her granddaughter, Sarah Jane Gibbon.

£4 – £6

VINTAGE RALLY

Broad Street, Kirkwall

It’s a great sight on Broad Street in front of the Cathedral, with an opportunity to see cars that can range in time from a Model T Ford from 1915 to a new electric vehicle of today – and with over a hundred years of vintage vehicles, classic cars and tractors in between, along with the sound of engines in action, and all beautifully restored.

AURORA: IN SEARCH OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

What really causes the northern lights? Plasma physicist and explorer Dr Melanie Windridge describes an Arctic journey of discovery through Scandinavia, Canada and Svalbard, interweaving the underlying science with background history, folklore and landscape – and spectacular images of the Northern Lights.

£4 – £6

PAINTERS, PENDULUMS, GHOSTS OF CULLODEN

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness

Science, mathematics and art celebrate three anniversaries – the Scottish mathematician Hugh Blackburn; his wife, the painter Jemima Blackburn, a favourite cousin of the physicist James Clerk Maxwell; and her relative, the first majopr Scottish woman portrait painter Katherine Read, born a century earlier. Art historian Prof. Frances Fowle and mathematics historian Dr Isobel Falconer explore richly colourful lives and times. Numbers limited, booking essential.

£10

WORKSHOP: AI ON YOUR PC

Kirkwall Grammar School (KGS)

What is AI, where is it going – and can we make use of it in rural and island areas? Here's an introduction from Dr Matjaž Vidmar of Edinburgh University, who uses AI for his work bridging space technology, art and innovation. The workshop takes place in one of the KGS computer rooms, or you are welcome to bring along your own laptop. Numbers limited to 15: booking essential.

£8

SIT ME DOON WITH MR BOOM

King Street Halls, Kirkwall

Greetings Earthlings big and small! My spaceship will be heading to Earth in September – but I have some problems with my Auntie-Gravity suit. I may materialise from the Space Ship Imagination in a sitting position rather than a standing one. Uncle Gravity has advised that energetic singing and dancing around a Sat-Me-Doon-Boom may help the suit’s power system recover – so your help is needed!

£4 – £6

IMPOSSIBLE ENGINEERING?

St Magnus Centre, Palace Road, Kirkwall

Thistle Wind Partners invite you to come along for a play and live experiments about the greatest engineering adventure of our time. The play features three of Scotland’s most exciting theatrical and TV actors: Kit Laveri, Stuart Falconer and Stuart Fenwick. Engineers of history, Archimedes and James Watt, challenge the Goddess of the Wind Zephyra to demonstrate that offshore wind engineering can really work! Can we achieve the next generation of floating turbines? Find out in this family show.

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

Skaill House, Sandwick

Award-winning photographer Richard Shucksmith shows you how to take stunning wildlife photos, with the help of the birds at the Skaill House Falconry Centre. Numbers restricted to 10, booking essential.

£10

THE MAN WHO LINKED THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

The aurora is triggered by the solar wind, but the link only became clear after a massive solar storm in 1859 and an equally powerful magnetic disturbance on Earth observed by Balfour Stewart, of Orcadian descent. Local historian Patricia Long tells his story, and Prof. Tom Stevenson looks at possible Orkney weather impacts.

£4 – £6

FROM BOO TO STARN: A BOAT BUILDING JOURNEY WITH JOHN LESLIE

Town Hall, Stromness

John Leslie from Shapinsay has been building boats for decades. Nearing retirement, he contemplates his life on the sea, as a creel fisherman and a boat builder. The film by Mark Jenkins from Stromness has music by James Watson and is followed by an after-screening discussion with John and Mark.

£4 – £6

UNEARTHING A MAMMOTH GRAVEYARD

Orkney Theatre, KGS, Kirkwall

Fossil hunters Neville and Sally Hollingworth with the story of their discovery of the remains of five Ice Age mammoths that led to the documentary Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard. They describe too the ancient world in which the mammoths and their hunters lived.

£4 – £6

KIRKWALL CITY PIPE BAND

Broad Street, Kirkwall

Kirkwall City Pipe Band with their final parade of the season.

WEST SIDE CINEMA: ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE

Stromness Town Hall

A documentary film exploring how we see the world, with its background the expansion of surveillance technologies in everyday life. It combines hallucinatory and often abstract visuals, history, and conventional fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, to look at different perceptions, for humans and cameras. It focuses on police body cameras and surveillance systems – and also traces studies of solar eclipses.

£3 – £5

A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED ORKNEY CONCERT

Harray Hall

Take a trip back to the 1950s, when Countrywoman was starting to write for the Orkney Herald – and audiences would enjoy a concert in the Harray Hall. Tonight there’s the West Mainland Strathspey and Reel Society, Robin Nicolson with some classic George Corrigall and David Towers songs, Highland dancing from Josie Gibbon and a sketch by Birsay Drama Club. Emma Grieve provides some Countrywoman readings, and joined by her sister Sarah Jane sings two of Bessie's poems, and it's all ably compered by Harvey Johnston.

£2 – £6

SYMPHONIES OF GALAXIES

The Orkney Club, Harbour Street, Kirkwall

Astronomy is one of the rich mix of influences on the Scottish composer Eddie McGuire, in conversation here with astronomer Dr Anne-Marie Weijmans and trumpeter and conductor Bede Williams, both from St Andrews University. He has also played for more than 40 years in one of Scotland’s most distinctive traditional music groups, the Whistlebinkies, and a group of Orkney traditional musicians will help to celebrate the occasion.

£8

Frontiers is an online magazine from Orkney International Science Festival

Read Frontiers >>

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.

Read More >>

We’re working hard to keep our prices as low as we can, with all our online events free, and our schools events as well, and warmly thank you for donations that assist.

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