Join us for an evening of discussion, performance reflections and film with leading dark sky experts, artists and academics to hear how cities can become dark sky-friendly. As part of the North York Moors National Park's tenth anniversary Dark Sky Festival celebrations, we will debate how we can all contribute to tackling the issues of light pollution, and the climate crisis and achieve better environments in urban and natural environments. Panellists will debate how York could become the UK's first Dark Sky City.
Book your free place here.
Panellists include:
Dr Jen Hall, Associate Professor of Tourism and Events, York St John University
Jen will Chair the panel, interweaving her experience of researching Dark Skies festivals in the North York Moors National Park to explore how public engagement leads to delivering conservation goals.
Mike Hawtin, Head of Nature Recovery at North York Moors National Park
Mike will discuss how the North York Moors National Park has developed its Dark Sky conservation programme and how he is extending this work to create a Northern Dark Skies Alliance.
Richard Darn, Dark Skies Consultant, Astronomer & Activist
Richard will explore the current state of the night-time environment and how we as citizens can do something to reduce our impact on the night sky. He will also share how the power of practical example in rural areas could point the way for urban places to reclaim the night, mitigating both biodiversity loss and climate change.
Dr Claire Hind, Professor of Contemporary Theatre, York St John University
Claire will discuss her walking arts practice that connects the geological terrain below the feet to the dark skies above. Her embodied experience of the natural environment has been influential in the composition of spoken word projects for live and recorded media. She asks, who are we if we can’t connect to our dark skies?
Sarah Williams, Energy and Environmental Projects Officer, York St John University
Sarah will share the University’s journey to becoming a sector leader in building a sustainable campus and will discuss how the University is planning to respond to light pollution by creating a 'Dark Sky Campus’.
Dr Brendan Paddison, Associate Professor and Interim Dean, York St John University
Brendan will discuss the work with Jen to understand how dark sky festivals help National Parks tackle the climate crisis and meet conservation goals. Together with Jen, they will screen The Dark Matters film to share their research findings.
Biographies
Mike Hawtin, Head of Nature Recovery Projects and Dark Skies Lead at North York Moors National Park.
Mike’s is Head of Nature Recovery Projects, delivering landscape-scale interventions within the Conservation and Climate Change Department at the North York Moors National Park, a protected upland landscape in the north of England. As lead Dark Skies officer, Mike led the application for North York Moors to be designated an International Dark Sky Reserve from inception and leads a programme across the National Park to tackle light pollution through education, engagement and delivering lighting improvement projects. He has contributed to discussions on forming UK Government policy on lighting through his participation in a UK Dark Skies Partnership of protected landscapes and is coordinating the formalisation of the Northern England Dark Skies Alliance to create a greater regional voice for the protection of dark skies.
Richard Darn, Dark Skies Consultant, Astronomer, Activist
Richard sat on the working group that led to the designation of the Northumberland International Dark Sky Park and helped launch the Kielder Observatory. He also co-founded the Kielder Forest Star Camp, ran a high-profile astro tourism training project for the Animating Dark Skies Partnership called Star Tips and began outreach astronomy in Kielder Forest in 1998. He continues to work with Northumberland Dark Sky Park and also the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors national parks, being part of the team that gained international dark sky reserve status for both in 2020. He works with tourism businesses and has appeared on BBC Sky at Night and Stargazing Live and has numerous TV and radio appearances to his credit. Aside from his dark sky work, he is an award-winning media consultant who has worked for a wide range of high-profile national clients.
Dr Claire Hind, Professor of Contemporary Theatre, York St John University.
Claire is an academic at YSJU, performer and writer working across intermedial performance. Her scores are structurally composed from natural earth processes of deep-time geology. Claire's walking art practice has been instrumental in the international development of a culture of walking, performing, experimental writing and well-being, she is the co-editor of the Ways to Wander series with Clare Qualmann and co-curator of The Walkbook: Recipes for Walking and Wellbeing. She collaborates with Rob Wilsmore as The Long Dead Stars an electronic dance poetry duo who recently released their new album Whitby Mudstone on Spotify www.clairehind.com
Sarah Williams, Energy and Environmental Projects Officer, York St John University
Sarah has worked at York St John University in the Estate Management team for more than ten years on a range of environmental sustainability projects that have impacted the built environment as well as teaching and research. Amongst her achievements, she managed a large-scale renewable energy project that cut carbon emissions across multiple university sites and she is part of the university's Living Lab team that has won several Green Gown Awards for collaborative initiatives that explore issues such as poor air quality and sustainable food systems.
Dr Brendan Paddison, Associate Professor and Interim Dean York Business School, York St John University
As an urban geographer, Brendan's research interests include tourism and destination management, spatial justice, policy, and collaborative forms of destination governance and development. Brendan leads the Visitor Economy and Experience research group at York St John, is co-chair of the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI) and is Chair of the York Tourism Advisory Board. He is the Editor of the Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education and a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Teaching in Travel and Tourism and the e-Review of Tourism Research journal.
Dr Jen Hall, Associate Professor of Tourism and Events, York Business School, York St John University
As a cultural geographer, her work explores issues of social and ecological justice in tourism, leisure, events, heritage and sport. Jen is an expert in governance and policy in tourism concerning urban heritage, spatial justice, and regenerative tourism in natural environments, and she is currently working with North York Moors National Park on a five-year research project to investigate climate crisis and conservation through public engagement programmes. Jen is a Fellow and Secretary of The Geographies of Leisure and Tourism Research Group at the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of the Other Everests AHRC Research Network. She has professional experience managing cultural regeneration projects in the public sector establishing and leading major venues, festivals, and cultural development programmes.
Background
The accelerated growth of light pollution has degraded the night sky and harms human health, wildlife and ecological systems (Foott, 2022). In the United States of America and Europe, 90% of citizens live under light-polluted skies, with only 1% of this light considered useful (Foott, 2022). Although there has been a growing global movement to “protect the night” from light pollution and the importance of dark-sky conservation has proliferated (DarkSky International, 2024), our knowledge about the effectiveness of these interventions is limited. There is a lack of social, environmental, and cultural understanding about the impact of light pollution and dark-sky conservation, with little attention paid to touristic perceptions of dark-sky reserves. However, raising awareness through tourism engagement programmes is crucial in addressing light pollution, the loss of our dark-sky and its impact on protected dark-sky places. In the United Kingdom (UK), several internationally recognised protected Dark-Sky places exist where the night sky is unobstructed by light pollution. The North York Moors National Park (NYMNP) is one such place. The NYMNP has established a dark-sky public engagement and regenerative tourism programme to facilitate tourism stakeholder awareness and engagement in dark-sky conservation and environmental protection and through pivoting research undertaken in 2024 we are now looking at how this could help York become Dark Sky Friendly.
York St John Creative Centre, York St John University
YO31 7EX
Adult: Free
Child: