More recordings online from the 2025 Festival!
There are more opportunities now to sample some of the The latest recordings online include The Promise of Quantum Computing, Seaweed After Storms, and The Last of the Great Auks. More will follow in the weeks ahead. They join our film set in Caithness and Orkney landscapes, As Old as the Hills.
You can also see the recordings from last year’s Orkney Climate COP, with four sessions covering key areas for Orkney’s future – Energy, Food from the Land, Housing and Transport.
All the recordings have been filmed and edited by Mike Robertson, through the support of OREF. The Orkney Climate COP is supported by the Highlands & Islands Climate Hub.
It went so well! We heard of islands of sheep and the last of the great auks, and we learned how to recycle ocean plastic, and how oysters might return through seabed restoration. We tackled a range of challenges in the first Orkney Climate COP, coming up with a series of practical actions, and we heard of the global context of melting polar ice and rising Pacific seas.
Future and past were entwined as we probed the depths of geological time, from ancient Caithness mountains to the Shapinsay shore, and we heard the story of a forest beneath the waves. We heard how northern stones may have been sailed to Stonehenge, how the island of Sanday knitted its way to Harrods, and how two young Orcadians made their own equipment to receive the early BBC television signals.
We explored the world of pure mathematics and had a quantum of poetry – and poetry too for the grass blowing in the wind and for the songs of the whales. We heard music for a quantum landscape, and from Helgoland where Heisenberg’s journey began, resonating amongst the pillars of St Magnus Cathedral.
In the weeks ahead some of the recordings will come online, and we will also be looking ahead with early news of the plans for the 36th Festival next year, when the dates will be 3-9 September 2026. There are more insights coming through on our Facebook page.
In the meantime, to so many helpers, contributors, supporters, funders, venues, audiences –
A very big thank you indeed!
Festival
Highlights 2025
It went so well! We heard of islands of sheep and the last of the great auks, and we learned how to recycle ocean plastic, and how oysters might return through seabed restoration. We tackled a range of challenges in the first Orkney Climate COP, coming up with a series of practical actions, and we heard of the global context of melting polar ice and rising Pacific seas.
Future and past were entwined as we probed the depths of geological time, from ancient Caithness mountains to the Shapinsay shore, and we heard the story of a forest beneath the waves. We heard how northern stones may have been sailed to Stonehenge, how the island of Sanday knitted its way to Harrods, and how two young Orcadians made their own equipment to receive the early BBC television signals.
We explored the world of pure mathematics and had a quantum of poetry – and poetry too for the grass blowing in the wind and for the songs of the whales. We heard music for a quantum landscape, and from Helgoland where Heisenberg’s journey began, resonating amongst the pillars of St Magnus Cathedral.
In the weeks ahead some of the recordings will come online, and we will also be looking ahead with early news of the plans for the 36th Festival next year, when the dates will be 3-9 September 2026. There are more insights coming through on our Facebook page.
In the meantime, to so many helpers, contributors, supporters, funders, audiences –
A very big thank you indeed!
There is also regular news in our social media – on Facebook and Instagram.
In addition, our online magazine of science and exploration, Frontiers, is developing into a richly varied source of stories. It’s full of features about Orkney – its wildlife and environment, its history and archaeology, its islands and people; and we have a varied range of contributing writers, artists and photographers.
We now have two Landscapes websites, one for Orkney Landscapes and one for Caithness Landscapes, with each one a comprehensive resource for local people and visitors alike – for schools and students, teachers and researchers, and for everyone who likes to find out more about the forces that have moulded the landscapes around us today. There are vistas of sea-cliffs and inland hills, the story of the ancient Lake Orcadie of Devonian times and the ripple-marks and mudcracks from it that we can see today, and the fishes that swam in it and are now fossils.
And there’s more that you can watch from home on our YouTube channel. There are now more than 300 videos to enjoy, with many talks and also music and films. We will be adding to them gradually with recordings from this year’s festival, with talks on many subjects, and films and music too, some of it specially written or recorded.
On this website you can also find more about our background and highlights of past festivals, and see more of Orkney itself. You can also look back to descriptions of this year’s events on the Programme page.
The need for all communities to produce more of their own food and drink is something that we will continue to highlight. There is a lot of information about how to grow food, how to improve the soil, how to forage food for added nutrition and wellbeing in our new Sufficient Orkney Food website.
And if you want to give us a boost to keep up with all the challenges of delivering the Festival, there is a Donate button at the foot of this page, and your help will be warmly appreciated!
We are also sending out Festival updates in several issues of a newsletter. You can download the latest one here and also join the mailing list.