Natural Narratives #2 - Biodiversity Talk with Professor Kirsty Park

Hello all!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our second Natural Narratives session of the year!

Natural Narratives is our first big community project since launching as a Community Interest Company back in May 2024. We plan on running six sessions in total from September 2024 to March 2025 on the last Friday of every month (apart from December). All sessions are free and will cover a range of talks, screenings, and activities with an emphasis on environmental themes. Our goal is to stimulate discussion in an informal way, socialise, and bring communities across Strathearn together.

Our second session took place on October 25th, 2024. We joined Professor Kirsty Park from Stirling University for a fascinating and thought-provoking talk about biodiversity: what it is, why we need it, why we should be concerned about it, and what we can all do to help. Biodiversity loss is a huge issue that impacts the planet and all of us! Prof. Park did a brilliant job explaining challenging ecological concepts in a way that was easily understandable and impactful to our audience. We ended the talk on a positive note by detailing some hugely successful conservation projects and ideas of ways each of us can encourage biodiversity in our gardens and green spaces. Huge thanks to Prof. Park for speaking so eloquently about such an important topic!

This time Sandison Hall was decked out with lots of spooky Halloween decorations, including some delightfully scary carved pumpkins donated to the event by Stewart Gavigan and Ruby and Katie Fisher! We also hosted a suitably freaky Halloween and biodiversity-themed quiz, where we guessed which weird creatures were real or AI, identified some skeletons, discovered several species with creepy names, and took a shot at a general ignorance round! I think it's fair to say we all learned something new there. Hopefully you all enjoyed the quiz and had a bit of spooky fun!

Our next Natural Narratives session will take place on November 29th, where we will be screening "The Bough Breaks," a film by award winning family filmmakers Mousehole Films. Free popcorn will be provided, and an informal Q&A session with the filmmakers will be held afterwards! Book your free place here.

See you next time!

~The Aquila Team 🦇