Dark skies in southern Scotland and northern England

The relatively unpeopled moorlands and forests of southern Scotland, the Scottish borders and Northumberland are celebrated as pristine sites, preciously free from light-pollution. As such, the Galloway Forest Dark Skies Park and the Northumberland Dark Skies Park have emerged as innovative spaces for engaging diverse communities through experimental forms of creative practice. Considered here are works by sound and performance artist Tim Shaw and by public artists and curators Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman. As directors of Sanctuary, an “off-grid art lab” in the Galloway Forest, the latter celebrate a form of darkness “where we are invisible to communication networks and where what we do is unknown”. Here is opportunity for border-crossing between environment, art, technology, science, and culture. This essay considers the potentialities of this borderland region’s dark skies as a way of thinking across and beyond borders and boundaries and envisioning new forms of connectedness and being together.