This year's exhibitiion is titled

“Westray Flagstone Explained”

curated by David Leather (shown right in the picture below), using more than 100 photos of Westray
and locally found fossils.

The exhibition opened at the beginning of May 2009 when the Orkney Ferries summer timetable began.

The exhibition won

Harcus Scott deep in conversation with David Leather.

Pictured l-r: Douglas Leslie, Cllr. Sam Harcus, Lizza Bain

On Friday, February 5th 2010, David Leather, with his wife Midge, attended the Geological Association’s meeting at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London for a presentation, as joint winner, of the ENU Geological Challenge Award. His "Westray Flagstone Explained" exhibition in the Westray Heritage Centre was joint winner of the award. The awards were presented by Chris Damon, editor of ‘Down to Earth Magazine’ and Steve Cooper head of Exploration for the big Italian oil company ENI. The judges were impressed by the ways in which so many community members got involved, using their skills to produce graphics, designing the exhibition, collecting and describing the specimens and manning the hall etc. It is hoped that some of the exhibition material will go on permanent display somewhere on the island. This project had certainly placed the geology of Westray before many people, no least the pupils at the island school who now know something of the geological foundations to their beautiful island.

The other joint winners were a retired couple from Derbyshire who made a ‘Geo–Hut’, a little limestone building containing a display of local geology.

The award is in the form of a heavy sculpture in Caithness Glass. A miniature glass award, with ‘Westray Heritage Trust’ engraved on it, was also presented, along with a cheque for £400 which will be spent on storage or display cases for exhibits.
 

The exhibition was so popular in 2009 that the Heritage Trust decided to keep it open for the 2010 season.

Accompanying the geology exhibition is The Orkney Venus, or as we in Westray prefer to call her the Westray Wife, details and photographs of which can be seen on the home page of this site.

National interest has been shown for this figurine, with a great deal of coverage in the newspapers and television. We will bring you more details of the Venus at a later date, but of course you can follow the blog of the Noltland 2010 Dig here on this site by clicking here.