Hebridean Dark Skies Festival podcast
8 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago -The Hebridean Dark Skies Festival presents a series of interviews with fascinating people from the worlds of astronomy, psychology, and the arts, exploring our festival themes of winter, darkness and the night sky. The podcasts are presented by festival director Andrew Eaton-Lewis, with sound mixed by Hamish Brown.
The Hebridean Dark Skies Festival is an ambitious annual programme of events taking place each February on the Isle of Lewis, including live music, film, visual art, theatre, astronomy talks, and stargazing. To find out more visit www.lanntair.com/darkskies.
The festival is led by An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway in partnership with Stornoway Astronomical Society, Calanais Visitor Centre, Gallan Head Community Trust, and Lews Castle College UHI. The festival is supported by Caledonian MacBrayne, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Culture & Business Fund. For its first three years it was part-financed by the Scottish Government and the European Community Outer Hebrides Leader 2014-2020 programme.
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Episodes
Juliana Capes
February 04, 2022 10:43 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBWhat does a sunset mean to you? Sunset Reports, screening as part of the 2022 Hebridean Dark Skies Festival's opening night on Friday 11 February, is a 52-minute film in which artist Juliana Capes describes an entire sunset, moment by moment. In episode eight of our podcast, Juliana explains how the film was shaped by her work describing art for visually impaired people, but also by grief, her fascination with colour, and a career making work about brief moments in time.
Roberto Trotta and Laura Cameron-Lewis
January 21, 2022 11:03 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBIs it possible to explain the mysteries of the Universe using only the 1000 most commonly used words in English? Or Gaelic? The Edge of the Sky | Oir Nan Speur is a unique new theatre show, adapted from a book in which award-winning science communicator Roberto Trotta tries to explain some of the most complex ideas in astronomy using only the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language. For the stage version, Hebridean theatre director Laura Cameron-Lewis has added anothe...
Catherine Heymans and Joe Zuntz
January 07, 2022 12:00 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBCatherine Heymans is Scotland's Astronomer Royal and a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh. Joe Zuntz is a Reader in Astrophysics at the University Of Edinburgh. Together they perform a comedy show called The Universe: Does Anything Matter?, which is coming to the Hebridean Dark Skies Festival in 2022. In episode six of our festival podcast they talk to festival director Andrew Eaton-Lewis about the evolution of the show, from an impromptu stand-up night at an a...
Bethany Rigby
February 12, 2021 18:58 - 38 minutes - 52.6 MBThe Outer Hebrides’ relationship with astronomy, Bethany Rigby says, “embodies humanity’s changing view of our place within the universe”. The designer, researcher and writer, above, is now the creator of Outer Hebrides // Outer Space, a new research project that explores our islands’ astronomical significance, from the Neolithic Age of celestial observation to present day plans for Spaceport 1, the UK’s first vertical satellite launch site. The project began during an Island Going ...
Sheona Urquhart
February 05, 2021 14:32 - 52 minutes - 72.3 MBAn astrophysicist who has lived and worked all over the world, Sheona Urquhart spent much of her childhood in the north of Scotland gazing at the stars, and is as fascinated by myths and legends, from the Hebrides to Hawaii, as she is by Extragalactic Astrophysics, the subject of her PHD from the University of Victoria in Canada. The episode is hosted by Hebridean Dark Skies Festival programmer Andrew Eaton-Lewis. The sound was mixed by Hamish Brown. Campfire Conversations is prese...
Renzo Spiteri
January 29, 2021 14:58 - 48 minutes - 66.9 MBA musician, composer and sound artist, Renzo Spiteri has performed at festivals across the world, working between England and Malta. He is now based in Shetland, whose landscape inspired his latest project, Stillness, described as “an immersive live performance that takes audiences on a journey through the different textures of darkness and light”. We talk to Renzo about how island life has inspired his work, and whether it has a new resonance since the lockdown. The episode is host...
Kari Leibowitz
January 22, 2021 10:01 - 51 minutes - 71.3 MBHow come one of the coldest, darkest places in the world has relatively low rates of wintertime depression? Health psychologist Kari Leibowitz spent a year investigating this as a Fulbright Scholar in Tromsø, Norway, which is so far north that it experiences a “Polar Night,” the time from November to January when the sun never rises. Kari has gone on to develop ‘wintertime mindset’ strategies to help people get through the long dark months of winter, and has seen a new surge of inte...
Karine Polwart
January 15, 2021 22:13 - 54 minutes - 74.3 MBScottish singer-songwriter Karine Polwart has long been fascinated by astronomy. At the 2020 Hebridean Dark Skies Festival she performed The Only Light Was Stars, a ‘work in progress’ version of a new show inspired by supernovas, in front of an audience for the first time. One year on, we catch up with Karine and talk astronomy, art, UFOs, drunken elks, nuclear power, jam cupboards, and staying creative in lockdown – among other things. The episode is hosted by Hebridean Dark Skies ...