Dark skies festival to go all inter-planetarium

Now in its fifth year, An Lanntair’s annual arts and astronomy festival has new dates this year, opening on Thursday 9 March with Chasing the Aurora, a talk by astrophotographer Wil Cheung, and closing with four Highland Astronomy stargazing nights from 18-21 March, at Gallan Head, Calanais Visitor Centre, Scaladale Centre and Grinneabhat in Bragar.

Events in between include two ‘planetarium weekends’, with indoor astronomy shows hosted by festival regulars Cosmos Planetarium and Edinburgh science attraction Dynamic Earth, making their first visit to Lewis; both planetariums also plan to visit schools and community venues across the island. Musicians Scott C Park, Josie Duncan and Michael McGovern are among the performers at David Bowie in Space, a concert on 10 March celebrating David Bowie’s space-themed songs, from 1970s hits such as Life on Mars and Starman to Blackstar from Bowie’s final album.

Also coming to the festival are the Glasgow-based street theatre company Mischief La Bas, who will debut a new indoor show, Lass O’Pairts, inspired by the stories of eight female pioneers in cosmology and space travel. And showing in An Lanntair’s main gallery is You Are Here, an interactive digital map of the stars above the Isle of Lewis created by Edinburgh design studio Ray Interactive. The map updates live as time passes, with the presence of visitors generating unique abstract animations, as “a reminder that all life originates in the stars”.

Festival director Andrew Eaton-Lewis said: An Lanntair is thrilled to be bringing the Hebridean Dark Skies Festival back for its fifth year, and we’re very grateful to Caledonian MacBrayne and all of our festival partners for their continued support. The Isle of Lewis is an extraordinarily beautiful place to be in winter, with truly spectacular views of the night sky and the Northern Lights; it’s always a pleasure to celebrate that in the company of so many inspiring artists and astronomers. Hopefully the stars will come out for us once again, but even if the weather is against us, we’ve got a packed line-up of indoor events exploring astronomy, the night sky and our relationship with darkness through music, theatre, film, visual art, workshops and more.”

The Hebridean Dark Skies Festival launched in February 2019, with funding from Outer Hebrides LEADER, as part of a broader winter arts programme led by An Lanntair. More recently the festival has had support from Caledonian MacBrayne, HIE, and the Culture and Business Scotland fund. In 2021 it adapted to lockdown with an online programme including a series of podcasts. Festival guests have included singer-songwriter Karine Polwart, comedian Robin Ince, and BBC presenter Chris Lintott.

Among the quirkier offerings this year is The Music of the Solar System, an exhibition of ‘interplanetary musicology’ in An Lanntair’s café bar which imagines every planet in the solar system as having its own distinct music scene.