www.darksky.org
Galloway Forest Park Dark Skies Application
There has been a huge interest in the Dark Skies Park since the successful designation in November 2009 resulting in an increase to visitors to the Forest Park. This has been great for tourism in the area and has also increased numbers visiting the Forest Park. Keith is working an a massive development plan for the Park including designing new visitor centres and 4 new trails. A lot of work is going into creating exciting new interpretation facilities for visitors.
We met with Keith to hear about his work, he explained that he is passionate about making the experience of the night sky accessible to people. He said that in some places there are 5 generations of people living with perpetual light, never experiencing total darkness. As 90 percent of visitors to the park are from urban areas, there is a real opportunity for people when they come to the Galloway Forest Dark Skies Park to have this experience. Keith is equally passionate about reducing light pollution. he would love to have a region wide lights off!
A few years ago Jo made a short film called Night Life which was shown at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen 2009 raising issues of light pollution and energy wastage.
During the residency, we will be looking at peoples psychological responses to the dark. What is our relationship with the dark and the night sky? Have we lost our connection to this part of of our heritage? Do we as humans have an ancient link to the dark? Do people remember their first experience of total darkness as a child? Do those memories inform our response to the lit world? How does it feel to look up from a dark world and see an illuminated Universe?
The film, The City Dark was released last year and poses the question " What do we lose, when we lose the night?" We are hoping to show it as part of the Dumfries and Galloway Film Festival later this year.
Watch The City Dark Trailer
No comments:
Post a Comment