Portfolio

There’s an opportunity, wherever you are, to join us on six days of the festival for a lively hour online. It’s through the kind help of the Open University who are hosting a range of their speakers. It will be at 5.30 pm each day, with topics ranging from regional accents to renewables, and from facial recognition technology to the science of sleep and dreams. With each day’s event there is a link which takes you to more information and the booking for a free ticket which provides a direct link to the event.

The aim is to come up with practical actions that Orkney can adopt, and the urgency for it is set by Lieutenant General Richard Nugee who describes on Sunday 6th evening why defence planners now regard climate chance as a core national threat. The issue is taken up by Prof. Tim Lang in the opening session on Monday 7th. The UK is sleepwalking into a food crisis, he says, and urgent action at regional and community level is needed. Gardener Ed Bollom shows the extent of what can be grown in Orkney, and Prof. Wendy Russell describes work on the crop options. And there’s a look at a new potential fuel for the future – renewably-produced ammonia, described by Prof. Angela Kruth who leads a European collaboration developing it.

Sea Stories at the Stromness Museum shows items rarely on display before – including remnants from the 55-foot-long sea creature washed ashore in Stronsay in 1808. In the Warehouse Building, Orkney Camera Club’s theme is A Landscape of Stone. At the Pier Arts Centre, The Scale of Things shows naturally dyed fibres, drawn from foraged plants. In the Orkney Museum, Torn from that Lovely Shore tells of a dark side to some Orkney merchant families of the past – involvement in plantations across the Atlantic and managing or transporting slaves – and also of one man who stood out against it. Also in the Orkney Museum is Wild, Still – Brighton-based photographer Josh Spindler and Orkney archaeologist Ingrid Mainland look at the cattle of Swona, a herd reverted to the wild state.

The Family Day is back at Kirkwall Grammar School with a wonderful mix of activities – including the return of the planetarium! We will have more news soon. We also welcome back Johnathan Doran and P:aul Beaumont from SSERC with a show full of light and colour – it’s called Things that Glow in the Dark. And there is the story of a remarkable man who developed the gramophone for the mass market – with video accompaniment plus a wind-up gramophone to play some classic old records.

The Peedie Kirk lunches of Orkney fare are not to be missed! Each day there is the One O’Clock Toast to a well-known Orcadian. Evening events in the Orkney Club include music from synthesizers and smallpipes, songs from Shetland and the Mearns, and a Slovenian wine evening.

This year has turned out wonderfully well musically, and includes three concerts, with varied themes and with new compositions, including world premieres and the presence of several composers themselves. Two of the concerts are in the Cathedral, and the third one is in the Orkney Theatre. There are evenings in the Orkney Club, with instruments from synthesizers to 3D-printed chanters, and from the music of the Mearns to old songs from Shetland. There are workshops as well for you to join in.

It’s time for some travel! To Hoy for a film on its glens, and Graemsay to watch the drone land with the mail. To Hobbister to see where the peat for Highland Park comes from. To Broad Street for the Vintage Rally and the Pipe Band parade, and to the Sunday morning service in the Cathedral; and to the closing ceilidh too!

See how a new type of chanter for smallpipes can be 3D-printed out of recycled ocean plastic, and hear it played. See how to tackle a wicked problem, and learn about new types of sensors to monitor ferry linkspans. Find out about options for vertical farming; and preserving the source of the peats used to dry the malt at Highland Park. Learn to make a Viking leather bag or sing the Hildina Ballad. Walk at the Ness of Brodgar and hear the latest news. Learn how British Sign Language is expanding to help discussion on climate change. Hear about northern travellers of two centuries ago, and develop your own botanical images and records.

Two new films take a journey into another Orkney, with a feeling of entering enchanted territory. One shows the glens of Hoy, with clues to their shaping by ice, with panoramic views from the top of the Cuilags. The second film shows Swona, out on the edges of the Pentland Firth, where its tides sweep round the island. Robert Macfarlane's Underland comes to the screen, and groups collaborate to show a hard-hitting environmental film.

Topics span the universe, with spectacular images from one space telescope – Euclid – and the launch of another, and the story of the woman astronomer it’s named for, and we’ll hear about a groundbreaking theory of gravity. We will meet a paralympic gold medallist and hear of her journeys up El Capitan and across Antarctica. We will hear about John Rae’s exploration of a route for a northern telegraph cable, and a young Orkney man who became a codebreaker in the Far East. There’s food self-sufficiency, and green ammonia as a fuel of the future, and how to approach the worst types of problems. And there’s another picture of the voyage home of Odysseus – a journey amongst the stars.