A Beacon of Light in Dark Times

Launching a Crowdfunder is a venture into unknown territory, a sort of leap in the dark. What target should one set? Is it too much or too little? What rewards, if any, should be offered? Will it reach its target? When I created one on Crowdfunder UK in November 2022 to start financing a documentary film on behalf of the Scottish Centre for Geoopoetics, I was unsure of the answers to any of these questions.

However, thanks to the generosity of our members and supporters from all over the world, in February 2023 we exceeded our target of £4,000 and raised £4840 which we matched from our organisation’s own funds. We also received generous sponsorship from RSK environmental consultancy as a result of our participation in their well-attended fringe conference at COP26, and later from the Geological Association Curry Fund and Edinburgh Geological Society. We were also grateful to receive support from the Culture Heritage and Arts Assembly, Argyll and Isles (CHARTS) as a result of the Expressing an Island project which I organised in four Argyll islands that year. 

In April 2023, an experienced short filmmaker Glenda Rome began filming during an icy stravaig up Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh and she then came to Cullipool Conservation Village on the Isle of Luing in Argyll, where the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics has its library and resource base, to film me and the artist Mary Morrison who was there to support our CHARTS project. I suggested she film other geopoetics members such as the musician and composer Mark Sheridan, the painter Pascale Rentsch, our Assistant Director, geologist and geopoet Patrick Corbett, and the dancer and choreographer Claire Pençak. Glenda filmed them in fascinating locations that varied from the Forth and Clyde Canal and Siccar Point to a Borders forest. She later returned to Luing to film some slate mosaic making workshops led by the artist, geologist and archaeologist Dugald Macinnes, and filmed the author John Philip Newell on the Isle of Iona. She then edited the film and brought it to fruition in the course of last year and this.

The film is a journey into the heart of geopoetics as the creative expression of the Earth through different eyes and its beautiful cinematography also reveals the superb poetry and ideas of the Scottish writer and thinker Kenneth White who was born in Glasgow, grew up in Fairlie in Ayrshire, and lived most of his life in France until his death in August 2023.

The world premiere of Expressing the Earth takes place on Saturday 20 September at the Sea Change Film Festival on the Isle of Tiree. It will be followed by a Q&A with Glenda as its director and me as its producer. Glenda has already won the award of Best Director at the Stratford on Avon Film Festival in August and our film was also shortlisted there for Best Documentary Film. It has also been selected for the New Renaissance Film Festival in London from 25-28 September where it’s one of two shortlisted Best Documentary films and it will be shown at the Docuworld Film Festival from 3-5 October, also in London. Thereafter we’re looking forward to screening it all over Scotland and beyond.

Glenda commented “I’ve made lots of short films but this is my first feature documentary film and it’s wonderful that it’s been so well received by four different film festivals. I’m really looking forward to going to its launch on Tiree and to taking it to the widest possible audience after that.”

It’s fitting that our film about geopoetics is being premiered on another Argyll island since much of it was shot on the slate Isle of Luing where I live and where the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics has its base. Our hope is that it will inspire those who watch it to a greater understanding of geopoetics which offers a creative approach to the Earth of which we are part and a better way of living on the planet. 

The world is in a terrible state as we can see from the Zionist genocide in Gaza, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump’s attempted dictatorship in USA, Starmer’s support for Israel and the rise in anti-immigrant racism in Britain, and serious conflicts in other parts of the world. Worldwide surveillance capitalism breeds wars, poverty, starvation and death, and it is destroying the planet and many of its species through global warming and its pollution of rivers and seas in its pursuit of greed. In the face of all this what can we do? We can take a leaf out of Patrick Geddes’s book and think globally but act locally. Begin from where we live, and work with others to try to make a difference. We need hope to inspire and sustain us, and geopoetics is one of the vital ways of giving us hope. We showed that in August at the successful Festival of Hope organised by Scotland in Europe and us at GalGael Trust in Govan in Glasgow. Sometimes a leap in the dark is the only way to bring hope and a beacon of light to the world in such tragic times.

The World Premiere of our Expressing the Earth Film is on the Isle of Tiree on Saturday 20 September. Glenda Rome won Best Director and our film was shortlisted for Best Documentary at the recent Stratford on Avon Film Festival.

Further information about the Sea Change Festival is available at https://screenargyll.co.uk/sea-change-festival-programme-2025/ and about geopoetics at www.geopoetics.org.uk.