Dark Skies: Places, Practices, Communities

Dark Skies addresses a significant gap in knowledge in relation to perspectives from the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In providing a new multi- and interdisciplinary field of inquiry, this book brings together engagements with dark skies from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, empirical studies, and theoretical orientations.

Throughout history, the relationship with dark skies has generated a sense of wonder and awe, as well as providing the basis for important cultural meanings and spiritual beliefs. However, the connection to darks skies is now under threat due to the widespread growth of light pollution and the harmful impacts that this has upon humans, non-humans, and the planet we share. This book, therefore, examines the rich potential of dark skies and their relationships with place, communities, and practices to provide new insights and understandings on their importance for our world in an era of climate emergency and environmental degradation.

This book is intended for a wide audience. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and professionals in geography, design, astronomy, anthropology, ecology, history, and public policy, as well as anyone who has an interest in how we can protect the night sky for the benefit of us all and the future generations to follow.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Part One: Introduction

Dark skies: meanings, challenges and relationships

Tim Edensor and Nick Dunn

Part Two: Creative engagements with dark places

Creative approaches to dark skies research: a dialogue between two artist-researchers

Natalie Marr and Helen McGhie

Dark skies in southern Scotland and northern England: border-crossing sites for creative experiment and envisioning connectedness

Ysanne Holt

The Transparency of Night

Louise Beer

Part Three: Sensing dark landscapes

Nightfalling: Dancing in the dark as an artistic practice

Ellen Jeffrey

Sensing Dark Places: Creating thick descriptions of nocturnal time and rhythm

Rupert Griffiths, Nick Dunn and Elisabeth de Bezenac

Considering festive Illuminations in Dark Sky places: honouring darkness, creative innovation and place

Tim Edensor and Dan Oakley

Part Four: Non-human entanglements with dark skies

Nature’s calendar, clock and compass: what happens when it’s disrupted?

Theresa Jones and Marty Lockett

Preserving Darkness in the Wildwood

Kimberly Dill

Darkening Cities as Urban Restoration

Taylor Stone

Part Five: Dark sky communities

Designing with the Dark

Kerem Asfuroglu

Who is afraid under dark skies? Four female experts about ‘spaces of fear’, astronomy and the loss of the night

Nona Schulte-Romer

What do we mean by “dark skies”?

Yee-Man Lam

Part Six: Dark sky tourism

Tread Softly in the Dark

Georgia MacMillan, Hannah Dalgleish, Therese Conway and Marie Mahon

Nocturnal (Dark) Anthropology: Spotlight on an Ancient Indian Civilization

Neha Khetrapal

Beauty Won’t Save the Starry Night: Astro-Tourism and the Astronomical Sublime

Dwayne C. Avery

Part Seven: Conclusion

Under the night: values and futures of dark skies

Nick Dunn and Tim Edensor

Nick Dunn is Professor of Urban Design and Executive Director of Imagination, the design and architecture research lab at Lancaster University, UK. He is founding Director of the Dark Design Lab, exploring the impacts of nocturnal activity on humans and non-humans. Nick is a Director of DarkSky UK, promoting more sustainable relationships between the built environment and the night, as well as exploring ways to promote wider and inclusive participation with dark skies. He is the author of Dark Matters: A Manifesto for the Nocturnal City (2016) and co-editor of Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020). Nick is a keen nightwalker, has curated exhibitions, and given invited talks at both literature and science festivals.

Tim Edensor is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the Institute of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002), Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005), From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (2017) and Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality (2020). He is the editor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010), and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Place (2020), Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020) and Weather: Spaces, Mobilities and Affects (2020). His most recent book, about a Scottish medieval cross, is Landscape, Materiality and Heritage: An Object Biography (2022).