Everyone Blames The Weather is a festival at Timespan centred on migrant labour and seasonal work, foregrounding the conditions, knowledge, and dignity of those who sustain the agricultural sector  in Scotland and the UK.

Part of the public programme of As Long As it Yields, by José García Oliva, and developed in close dialogue with the artist, the festival builds on the exhibition’s enquiry into how seasonal labour is organised, experienced, and rendered invisible. It traces how responsibility for exploitation is distributed across supply chains, from employers and agencies to retailers and consumers, and considers the implications for rights and working conditions.

Over the weekend, Everyone Blames The Weather brings together unions, migrant workers, academics, and artists through talks, discussions, and film screenings, alongside shared moments including dance workshops, live music, a community meal, an evening barbecue, workshops, and a midsummer bonfire.

Taking place at the summer solstice, when agricultural cycles intensify, the festival connects labour to seasonal time and to the rhythms of land and place, offering a moment to gather, listen, and reflect together.

The title is drawn from García Oliva’s environmental installation on Timespan’s façade, reflecting how weather is often used to justify disruption, while responsibility for risk and loss is shifted onto workers.

The festival continues Timespan’s programme of seasonal gatherings, including Salt and Silver in 2025 (curated by Joanne Coates and part of the public programme of the exhibition Red Herring), Becoming Futures in 2024 (curated by Almare), and the Eastre Weekend in 2023.

All festival activities are free. Helmsdale is especially busy at this time of year; early booking of accommodation is recommended.

Press Release

Programme and Highlights

Friday 19th

6-7pm
Polaris Film Screening and Artist Talk
with Yunior Aguiar Perdomo

Join artist Yunior Aguiar Perdomo for a screening and discussion of Polaris, an animation exploring the cultural rituals and routines that keep migrant communities in Perth, Scotland, connected to their cultures of origin. The film was developed through interviews with individuals, families and first-generation migrant groups. The work forms a partial record of the continuity of cultural traditions within the city, told from personal and intimate perspectives.

The work builds a parallel between these practices of cultural connection and the North Star, a traditional navigational guide for those travelling through unfamiliar routes. Research material gathered during the project appears as text alongside an astronomical representation of the North Star.

About the Artist
Yunior Aguiar Perdomo is a Cuban-born artist and educator based in Scotland whose practice explores memory, displacement, identity and material culture through moving image, drawing, printmaking and installation. Since 2004, he has also worked as part of the collective Celia-Yunior, exhibiting internationally across biennales, film festivals and exhibitions throughout the Americas and Europe.

Saturday 20th

11am to 12.30pm
Lives on Hold: Seasonal Migration and Agricultural Labour in the UK
Talk with Professor Philomena de Lima

We are excited to welcome Professor Philomena Lima for a talk exploring how rural communities are shaped by global systems of migration, labour and food production. Expanding her contribution to As Long As it Yields booklet, she will focus on the role of migrant workers in UK agriculture: what are the hidden infrastructures that sustain rural economies? How is exploitation embedded in the production of the food we consume everyday? How can we challenge the political narratives surrounding migration and precarity?

Moving between rural studies, migration theory and political economy, the talk considers how both migrant and local communities are affected by the same conditions of neoliberal capitalism, labour insecurity and social dispossession.

About the speaker
Professor Philomena de Lima is Professor Emerita of Applied Sociology and Rural Studies and founder of the Centre for Remote and Rural Communities (2004), with over 35 years of research on migration, inequality and social justice in rural life.

Her publications include The Rural Migration Nexus: Global Problems, Rural Issues, the Rethinking Rural series, and continuous research on race, racism and migrant wellbeing in Scotland and rural communities internationally.

12.30pm to 1.30pm
Community Lunch
with Cereal Bakery

For lunch we have partnered with Cereal Bakery, a local company based on the North Coast. Working with locally grown ingredients wherever possible, Cereal Bakery champions seasonal produce, regional food networks and ethical approaches to food production. The meal will bring festival participants together around the table for an opportunity to eat, connect and continue conversations from the day’s programme.

For the festival, they will provide a two-course lunch, vegetarian or vegan, to celebrate the produce of the summer season.
Booking is essential and the meal will use a pay-what-you-can scale.

2pm-3:30pm
The Fight for Farmworkers’ Rights
Panel with Justice Is Not Seasonal Workers

We are thrilled to welcome representatives from Justice is Not Seasonal to Timespan to lead a panel discussion on seasonal agricultural labour, workers’ rights and migrant justice in the UK. 

Centring the experiences and perspectives of people who have worked within the Seasonal Worker UK visa scheme, the conversation will address the conditions faced by farmworkers and the structures that enable exploitation. We will get to hear more about the work done by Justice is Not Seasonal organising and unionising workers to build visibility, accountability and solidarity across rural communities, farms and food systems.

About Justice is Not Seasonal
Justice Is Not Seasonal (JINS) is a collective formed by seasonal migrant workers in the UK advocating for fair working conditions, protection from exploitation, and reform of the Seasonal Worker visa scheme. Led primarily by workers from Latin America, the campaign centres migrant workers’ rights, justice and collective organising across the agricultural sector.

4-4.45pm & 4.45–5.15pm for young people
Exhibition Tour with José Garcia Oliva

Get a unique opportunity to experience an artist-led tour of our current exhibition As Long As It Yields with José Garcia Oliva.

José will guide visitors through the exhibition, sharing insights into the research, practice and making process behind his new commissions exploring agricultural and labour extraction. The tour will offer space for open conversations around the exhibition’s themes, materials and the questions explored connected to land exploitation and the specificity of its context in Scotland.

We will run a special tour for young people from 4:45 to 5:15

4pm to 6pm
Solstice Garland Making
Workshop with Nadiia Yatchenko

Join a festive, drop-in making session open to all ages and abilities exploring garland-making to celebrate together the summer solstice. Artist Nadiia Yatchenko will lead an informal workshop centred on making, gathering and shared creativity. No previous experience is needed and participants are welcome to arrive at any point during the session.

5:30-6:30pm
Pizzica Dance Workshop
with Viviana Checchia

What on earth does a spider have to do with folk dance?
Join Viviana Checchia for a workshop exploring pizzica, a traditional folk dance from Puglia in Southern Italy. Rooted in collective movement, rhythm and improvisation, pizzica has historically been connected to rituals of healing and release associated with the myth of the tarantula bite.

The workshop is grounded in the belief that everybody is a dancer. Led not by a professional dancer but by a passionate practitioner and member of the Timespan board, the session will offer an accessible and informal introduction to pizzica, its histories and its social energies.

Together, participants will explore the legacy of the dance alongside a central idea often shared in Puglia: tradizione è innovazione — tradition is innovation. The session invites everyone to contribute to a Scottish iteration of pizzica through movement, participation and collective joy.

Let’s take some time to dance together.

6pm to late
Evening Celebration in the River Garden
Join us for an evening of food, dance, live music and gathering in Timespan’s river garden.The evening brings together local volunteers, musicians and performers for a relaxed celebration marking the solstice weekend.

6:30pm to 8pm
Garden Barbecue with Friends of Timespan

Join the solstice festivities with the Friends of Timespan’s barbecue. Enjoy the delicious food and entertainment. We will be firing the community barbecue to prepare delicious burgers and ice cream around the fire (vegan and gluten-free options available). Bar by donation will be available.

£10 per person including a delicious Burger, and an ice-cream scoop.
£8 per person including a Hot Dog, and an ice-cream scoop.

8pm
Live Music with Susannah Stark & Band

The night will continue with an exciting line-up of live music. Susannah Stark and Band are an experimental ensemble from Glasgow, playing an extended folk session in mystical locations around the Govan stones, river Clyde & underground waters.

Their sound is formed out of sparse sonic gestures and vibrating intensities, weaving among multi-lingual songwriting in both Scottish Gaelic and English, drawing from pop, jazz, experimental, folk & kraut rock influences to create a tactile expression of place, faith and being that can also be experienced as a ritualistic channelling of unseen and unheard forces in everyday life.

Following on from Stark’s debut solo offering of experimental pop, ‘Time Together (Hues and Intensities)’ out Belgian label Stroom in 2020, is their 2025 album ‘mion-phuingean – Minor Gestures’, a collaborative release with Stroom and Glasgow’s Night School Records.

9pm
Fire Pit Ceilidh

Bring your instruments and warm up your vocal cords for a folk-centred open jam around the fire pit in Timespan’s River Garden. The ceilidh is open to all, with a number of paid slots available for local young musicians.

Sunday 21st

11am
Labour Justice: What We Can Achieve Together
Talk with Worker Support Centre 

This closing session will continue the weekend’s conversations around food systems, land, labour and workers’ rights, with a focus on campaigning, solidarity and collective action.

About Worker Support Centre
The Worker Support Centre is a Scotland-based charity supporting migrant workers on visas and temporary contracts, particularly in agriculture, food production and care.
Through advice, advocacy and campaigning, the organisation works alongside workers to challenge exploitation, strengthen rights and build fairer labour systems.

Access and booking

Times and event details are subject to change. Please check the event page before travelling.

Some events are drop in, while others require booking due to limited capacity. Booking is essential for the Community Lunch.

For access information or questions about the programme, please contact Timespan.

Photo courtesy Gavin MacQueen