COME FORAGING!
Did you know that dandelion leaves are high in vitamin C and minerals, and the young leaves can be used in salads? That chickweed is rich in magnesium, phosphorus and copper, and can be used like spinach?
HIGHLIGHTS FROM EVENTS 2019
The Festival had an outdoor look this year, and opened with stories of survival skills in the wild. Zeki Basan is a glacier guide in Iceland’s winter, and at other times of the year a wilderness instructor in the Cairngorms and elsewhere, and an accomplished filmmaker as well.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2019 FAMILY DAY
We moved to a new venue at Kirkwall Grammar School, with a wealth of activities for every one to enjoy, and we had a great turnout of people.
Foraging Fortnight in 2019
We had a great time with the foraging events in the 2019 Festival. They came about through the LEADER-funded initiative covering five Scottish regions, and they added a whole new dimension to the programme, and to the weekends before and after.
PROGRAMME 2019
It’s 50 years after Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, and only a handful of people have followed. Do we need a new approach, for instance setting up staging-posts for a highway to the Moon, Mars and beyond? That’s the topic of one presentation. We’ll also hear from a Scottish company how satellite images can help to track illegal logging and tackle fuel poverty.
Festival will commemorate Moon landing
Festival will commemorate Moon landing Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary will be commemorated in Orkney in September with a programme of talks on space and astronomy in the islands’ annual science festival.
Science festival gets foraging dimension
Orkney International Science Festival this year will have an added outdoor dimension as it joins forces with a new Foraging Fortnight being established in Scotland.
EXHIBITIONS 2019
“From Orkney Nature to Murdoch Mackenzie’s beautifully detailed charts of Orkney waters, from Scapa Flow’s history and marine life to sea forms and soundworks …”
Foraging Programme 2019
Foraging Programme 2019 The first Scottish Foraging Fortnight is producing a rich harvest of events and
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.
Come out foraging with us!
It’s fresh, it’s nutritious, and it’s free! The benefits of foraging is becoming realised, doing what generations of people have done for thousands, indeed millions, of years – finding food in the wild.
MUSIC EVENTS
BUT OH MY LOVE! THE CHAIN OF TIME The story was that of the Irish mathematician Sir William
HIGHLIGHTS FROM EVENTS 2018
One of the highlights was Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse (2001, Physiology/Medicine) in conversation with Dave Gray of BBC
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2018 FAMILY DAY
How far can a model car run on hydrogen? You start by connecting up the leads and seeing the
The Selkie’s New Clothes
Are inspired by the selkie folklore, shape-shifting beings and their transformative powers. In order to shapeshift they had to cast off their sealskins. Within these magical skins lay the transformative power to return to seal form, and therefore to the sea.
Like the Corn Cut Down by the River
Sung by Sheena Wellington and the composer, Lorcán Mac Mathúna, The Walls of Dublin rounded off Like the Corn Cut Down by the River, the story of the battle of Clontarf...
ABOUT OISF FESTIVAL 2018
Orkney International Science Festival 2018 This was the year when the numbers took off further than ever.
Year of Young People to boost Festival
Music from Ireland, astronomy from Uzbekistan, newly created art and design, and young people to the fore – these will all be features of this year’s Orkney International Science Festival in a special package for the Year of Young People 2018.
Food Events 2018
There’s an opening lunch of Orkney seafood to follow the session on sustainable fisheries research, and the afternoon looks at further aspects of the sea for the future.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM EVENTS 2017
One of the highlights was Prof. Peter Higgs In Conversation with his former mathematical physics student Dennis Canavan. The
ABOUT OISF FESTIVAL 2017
Orkney International Science
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2017 FAMILY DAY
You could make a cloud chamber and see particles from outer space. You could write in runes, or study
From childhood tinkering to gravitational waves
Had Prof. Ron Drever lived just a few more months this year, he would almost certainly have been awarded a share of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, for his part in one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, the discovery of gravitational waves.
Big Bill and the Guns of Alamein
At the second battle of el-Alamein, where the Allied artillery was the only protection for the slow infantry advance
Pepperwort and Parsley, Beeswax and Fulmar Oil
Mary Beith was known as a lecturer and researcher of great clarity on the traditional medicines of the Highlands.
Maxwell’s Light
Images from two of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell's favourite walks, near Parton in Galloway, where the Lair
Highlights from Events 2016
Marty Jopson of The One Show got the Festival off to a flying start, followed next day by a highly dynamic show on the science of everyday life.
About OISF Festival 2016
The sea surged through the Festival, in a year when the world looked back a century to the battle of Jutland and forward to the potential of tidal power.