This weekend, Talks & lectures

Award-winning traditional African acrobats from Ghana, West Africa. A breathtaking performance, not to be missed. A family friendly event (i.e. suitable for all ages).

Hands-on advice from the experts about using binoculars and telescopes to watch wildlife. Also a chance to buy some (binoculars and/or telescopes, that is, not wildlife). All proceeds go back into the RSPB to continue conservation efforts.

A free, local literature festival run by West Dunbartonshire Libraries that nevertheless manages to book some big name authors for its programme of talks, signings and more unusual events. This 11th edition sees Alasdair Gray, William McIlvanney and Allan Massie join non-fiction writers Margaret Evison, Tom Devine and DA…

A celebration of everything birdy – optic sales, peregrine viewing, talks, workshops, kids activities, falconry, a dusk chorus and much more.

A social get-together for Europe's oldest space politics society. All spacefans welcome!

A series of discussions examining various aspects of cinema.

Graphic design as an extreme sport. Andie Airfix talks about the challenges working with music’s ‘megastars’ including Metallica, Thompson Twins, Stones, Doa, Leppard, Zeppelin and more. Talk dates: May 10/11; (Def Leppard). 17/18; (Metallica). 12/19/24; (Music design; Early Days). 8/15/22/25; (Music design; Latter Days).

Ann Cvetkovich discusses queer archives and the importance of recording traumatic cultural experience.

This instalment brings members of the New York House & Ballroom community to Glasgow, along with queer theorists, performance artists, archivists, theologians and filmmakers, to explore Voguing, drag, clubbing, and the politics of race, class and gender.

An opportunity to enjoy some fine cheese and wine in the company of artists from Dumfries & Galloway and discuss things such as the Scotland-England border sculpture.

Artist Ilana Halperin talks to Bryony Bond about her current exhibition, The Library, as the pair lead a tour of the works.

Cornelia Parker is one of the most profound and poetic artists working in Britain today. Her wide-ranging practice, chiefly in sculpture and installation, touches on the fragility of human experience. Exploring everything from ghosts and gravity to relics and the unconscious, she transforms everyday, ordinary objects…

Three authors discuss the graphic form, which is enjoying a long-overdue renaissance. Join Mary Talbot (Costa Award-winning author of 'Dotter of Her Father's Eyes'), Glyn Dillon (author of cult bestseller 'The Nao of Brown') and Stephen Collins (cartoonist for 'The Guardian' and author of the hotly anticipated 'The…

Bees and other pollinators are responsible for the pollination of one third of our shopping basket. There is now an urgent need to understand how the complex interaction of the multiple pressures faced by pollinators (habitat loss, climate change, pests and diseases and environmental chemicals) currently threatens their…

Author, composer and founder of the European College of Hypnotherapy, Dr. Keith Hearne conducted the world's first sleep-laboratory into 'Lucid' dreaming at Liverpool University. Here he reveals his discoveries, and what these findings tell us about dreams, the unconsciousness, and how to induce our own lucid…

‘Idlers of the Enlightenment’: A Symposium with Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson, QI’s Director of Information John Mitchinson, and writer Mark Vernon. Learn about the lesser-known works and hitherto concealed philosophy of ‘idlerism’ as espoused by philosophers and writers such as Rousseau and Dr Johnson – diminishing any…

Course designed for those with some experience of drawing and painting, combining practical work with study of artists and art movements directly related to your work. Taught by Peter Wilson. Prices includes all materials. Ages 18+.

At 87-years-old, James Salter has written what is likely to be his final novel, 'All That Is'. The book draws together the great themes of his lifetime's work - war, love, sex, marriage and what it means to write. It is a sweeping, seductive love story set in post-Second World War America. Spanning decades it tells of…

Rekindle your connection to nature in this workshop which uses teaching tools from shamans around the world use to connect with their spiritual guides.

Jack Halberstam mines mainstream culture for its queer potential in relation to female masculinity and drag kings, anarchy, failure and chaos, here finding an emergent cultural idiom of anarchistic revolt in Jay Z and Kanye West's No Church in the Wild.

Mark Boyle has lived completely without money in England for over two and a half years. This experience formed the basis for his first book, The Moneyless Man, and his follow-up, The Moneyless Manifesto. Richard Glover is a lecturer at the School of Economic Science in London. Together they ask how we might think…

Mark Stevenson is a writer, deep-thinker and stand-up comedian. When suddenly confronted with his own mortality, he began to consider what the future holds for our species. Stevenson set out simply, asking, 'What's next?' He then travelled the world looking for the answers. Find out about his encounters with…