OISF 2022

Fire on the Amazon, fire in the Arctic. Orkney’s rocks forming in an ancient lake. Dinosaurs with wings. The origins of the potato, and the origins of Orkney’s own grain. The days of early radio. The Caithness genius who invented the fax machine, and the electric clock as well. The men and women who tended a seed bank through

You can access many events online. The past two years have been a time of discovery for us, developing online delivery and finding out that we have been able to reach many people who would not otherwise have been able to access us. We are delivering a range of events online this year. Some of these are livestreamed from

We’ve a rich harvest of stories, among them the account of one of the great voyages, six men in an open boat through Antarctic seas on a rescue mission through blizzards, ice and mountainous waves. We will hear about the Orkney connections developed by one of them. We will look north to the days of the Arctic whaling,

Among the exhibitions, art meets geology in The Rock Cycle, and it meets poetry and natural history in When the Grass Dances, with a film too. Other films include island elements of Orkney and a filmed composition of drawing, painting and sound from the Ness of Brodgar excavations, evoking the physical existence of the dig, in a flow of voices and images.

There’s a rich mixture of themes in this year’s exhibitions. Art meets geology in The Rock Cycle at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, and just along the street Orkney’s Neolithic past is the theme of After Orcadia at the Northlight Gallery. A little further on, Stromness Museum features the story of an ongoing excavation of an Iron Age broch

The programme will include two concerts in St Magnus Cathedral. For one of them we’ll go back to the 17th century and hear music by Humfrey and Handel, Monteverdi and Vincenzo Galilei. There will be Buxtehude and Judith Weir too; and the music of Edward McGuire. Indeed the composer himself will be joining us for an after-concert talk, where