First Ever Isle Of Wight Dark Skies Festival An Astronomical Success

The inaugural Dark Skies Festival has been hailed a success, with more than 1,000 people attending over two days.

The event took place on Friday and Saturday February 17 and 18 at Isle of Wight Pearl in Brighstone.

The aim of the festival was to celebrate and raise awareness of the fantastic dark skies of the Isle of Wight.

Talks, presentations, workshops, art, film, and performance were on offer over the free-to-attend weekend.

The festival was put on to support the Island’s application to become an international officially recognised ‘Dark Skies Park’.

Someone (not Dom Kureen despite the resemblance) enjoying finding out about telescopes with Vectis Astronomical Society

It was funded through the Isle of Wight Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in partnership with pioneering arts development organisation New Carnival.

Director of New Carnival, Hannah Ray, said:

"We have been overwhelmed by the popularity of this event and the appetite of the public to find out more about the Island’s unique dark skies.

"Support from so many local organisations and individuals helped to make the event a tremendous success."
 
Richard Grogan of the Isle of Wight AONB said:

"The Isle of Wight AONB was pleased to support this event through the UNESCO Site Across the Channel Project and we hope everyone enjoyed themselves over this fantastic weekend.

"Many thanks to the New Carnival Company and all performers and volunteers and we wish the Isle of Wight Council luck with their bid to the International Dark Skies Association to designate this part of the Island as a Dark Skies area."

New Carnival prioritises working with children and young people.

Fabulous galactic facepaint by SoulFace Facepainting

For this festival that involved collaboration with IW College Art and Design students who created large willow nocturnal animals and individual fine art pieces as part of their coursework on the theme of ‘Dark Skies’.

Broadlea School children, years 5 and 6, worked with the Wight Aviation Museum finding out about the Black Arrow project where rockets were designed, built and tested on the Isle of Wight in the 1960s and 70s.

They created junk model rockets with New Carnival artist Gemma Mallinson.

Pupils from Fiveways, Ryde School Pre-Prep created neon artworks representing spacecraft using glow in the dark tape as well as a series of photo booth props representing the solar system.

Among the creators involved, Alicia French ran workshops making clay asteroids, ‘Stixguy’ Kai Davis performed a light show with his circus skills, storyteller Corey Gibbs told stories of the stars and Eloise Preston ran a creative writing session.

Making clay asteroids with artist Alicia French

Alicia said:

"I'm so grateful that New Carnival invited me to lead these workshops as an early career artist.

"Helping me to show people how to explore the sensory and spontaneous nature of making with clay."

A short feedback survey has been made available for people visited the Dark Skies Festival.