Reply To: Dark Skies – General Interest

[Howard Lawrence]

Another of the recent groups on the UK anti-light pollution scene is DarkSky UK. This group is the U.K. chapter of Dark Skies International (DSI), which is the new name of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA). It is always difficult to rebrand an organisation and I suspect that we will continue to refer to it as the IDA for a long while.
Three or four CfDS committee members are also in DSI, including myself. CfDS and DSI/ IDA have a long history of collaboration and friendship going back decades. There are several advantages to this international network for furthering dark skies campaigns such as size, resources, experience and membership structure. Their Slack forums, training sessions and on-line meetings are a great way of engaging with and inspiring supporters. One downside is that it costs a fixed donation to be a member. But that is more or less inevitable in an effective campaigning charity with paid staff and fixed organisational costs. The U.K. branch of DSI can be found at https://darksky.uk .
The parent international organisation can be found at https://darksky.org .