Orkney Science Festival programme
is the biggest yet
(Dated August 8, 2002)
Click here for full programme details

The Orkney Science Festival announced its programme today – the biggest yet. To cope with demand, the festival is expanding by one day, to run for eight days from Friday, August 30 through to Friday, September 6.

The festival this year has a strong environmental theme, with the Orkney Environment Day being moved to Monday, September 2, to join the festival activities.

The theme for the Environment Day will be climate change, with speakers reviewing the evidence and looking at the likely impacts on Orkney and how key industries such as farming will be able to cope.

From Australia will come a talk on wilderness and the regeneration of native rainforest. Other international contributions will come from Slovenia, from Denmark, from the US, and from Zimbabwe.

The US contribution will be an account of some of the remarkable new materials developed by NASA researchers for the Space Programme. One of Zimbabwe’s most talented traditional musicians will join a discussion on the role of women in science.

Other lively issues for discussion include a radical questioning of current doctrine on the role of natural selection in evolution, and a new approach to economics by using energy instead of money as the underlying indicator for economic decision-making.

Renewable energy will again be to the fore, with aspects including solar power, for which it is being suggested that Orkney’s long summer days may give it a bigger role than might have been thought. An Energy Bus from Derbyshire will tour Orkney during the festival, to give hands-on access to numerous energy devices and models.

Amongst the new work to be announced will be the latest clues from DNA on the ancient peoples of the British Isles. There will also be an evening, showing newly discovered wartime archive photographs of Orkney in World War One, plus previously unseen film taken by the Luftwaffe over Orkney in the last war.

Festival director Howie Firth said yesterday that the programme had had to be expanded to give space for the many ideas that were coming forward for the festival.

“As its reputation grows, so, too, do the ideas and participant numbers,” he said. “We also like to open up new areas for discussion, to get a fresh look at ideas.”

The programme is being issued with today’s copies of The Orcadian, and will also be available through the tourist offices and other public venues. Tickets will go on sale at the tourist office in Kirkwall towards the weekend.

Mr Firth said that due to the pressure of space in the programme, several of the talks had been inadvertently omitted from the booking forms before they went to the printers, but that the corresponding tickets would all be available.

“We’ve tried to choose venues with plenty of space,” he said. “But we do anticipate heavy demand for particular events, so our advice is certainly to book early if possible.”

Full programme details