- Running from 23 to 29 September Dundee Design Festival reveals a programme of activities, exhibitions and talks featuring the work of over 150 designers all under one roof filling 10,000 sqm of Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc.
- Scotland’s biggest festival of contemporary design will showcase new and existing designs in furniture, interiors, jewellery, homewares, craft, graphic design and fashion in a series of exhibitions.
- Visitors to Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc will see the former factory site transformed, hosting hands on activities for all ages including making beasties with Donna Wilson, screenprinting with Timorous Beasties and getting to grips with sustainable interior design with Alicia Storie of ADesignStorie.
- Members of Dundee’s design community will feature across the programme with over 50 designers including 14 DJCAD design graduates showcasing their designs at the festival.
- Festival organisers reiterate their commitment to creating one of the world’s most sustainable design festivals powered by clean energy and using less than 30% virgin materials in staging the festival.
Dundee Design Festival has revealed the 2024 Festival programme which is now online at www.dundeedesignfestival.com. Taking over 10,000 sqm of former factory space, the free festival will run from 23 to 29 September at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc on the outskirts of the city. Visitors will be welcomed to a world of Scottish contemporary design with opportunities to discover new and existing designs in furniture, interiors, jewellery, homewares, craft, graphic design and fashion across a programme of exhibitions and installations aligning with the festival theme of ‘Multiplicity’.
Festival goers will also be able to unlock their inner designer with a series of hands-on activities for all ages. Those exploring the knitted forest can learn how to make Beasties with the team from Donna Wilson’s Dundee based Knit Shop while visitors with a feel for fabric can try their hand with screen printing their own bags and clothing at the Timorous Beasties installation. Sustainability expert and designer Alicia Storie of ADesignStorie will lead interior design workshops at her Tiny Home installation the House of Wellbeing and drop-in visitors can see and hold pioneering sustainable materials. These are just a few of the ways to experience design hands-on at this year’s festival.
Dundee Design Festival 2024 will also introduce 20 new commissioned bookends inspired by the travels and reporting of pioneering female foreign correspondents Bessie Maxwell and Marie Imandt who embarked on an epic tour of the globe from Dundee in 1894 for The Courier and The Weekly News. The ‘Two Intrepid Ladies’ as they were known became a sensation on their return to Scotland having reported on the lives of women they met in a year and 26000 miles of travel. Now 20 Scotland based designers have reimagined the humble bookend taking inspiration from their collected writings.
Dundee Design Festival 2024 photo by Grant Anderson.
Festival Highlights include:
FRAMEWORK: Over 70 designs have been selected for this exhibition from an open call capturing a snapshot of Scottish contemporary design today. From Fair Isle to Dumfries and Galloway this exhibition features exhibits as diverse as neurodivergent aircraft seating design to insect inspired jewellery. Ceramics, sculpture, glass, furniture, sustainable fashion, jewellery and graphic design all feature giving visitors an opportunity to see how design interacts with other creative disciplines.
BOOKENDS: Festival Creative Director Dr Stacey Hunter invited 20 Scotland based designers to respond to the collected writings of Bessie Maxwell and Marie Imandt, two of the first female correspondents to circumnavigate the globe in 1894 and report back to eager readers of The Courier and Weekly News. The selected designers took inspiration for their designs from the landscapes they encountered, the cultural differences the writers discovered, the impact of their writing and more.
The result is a unique exhibition of objects holding as many stories as the books that could sit between them. Designers and studios featured are; Adam Johnston, Akiko Matsuda, Alistair Byars of GRAS, Aymeric Renoud, Camillo Atlas, Steven Blench of Chalk Plaster, Ciara Isabel Neufeldt, Granite + Smoke (Lindsey Hesketh + Claire Canning), James Rigler, Jennifer Gray, Juli Bolaños-Durman, Kate Trouw, Lauren Morsley, Louise Forbes Design, Marc Sweeney, MULGREW, Nicholas Denney Studio, Nick Ross, Wobbly Digital by Soorin Shin, Stefanie Ying Lin Cheong.
MATERIALISE: Four of Scotland’s leading design studios were invited to embrace the space and ambition inherent in the festival site at MSIP. The result is a series of large scale installations inviting festival visitors to see Scottish design up close, get hands-on with materials, learn about new approaches to interior design, play with colour and fabric and even enjoy design inspired performance.
Provocative design studio Timorous Beasties will create an immersive maze-like space framed by their iconic wallpaper design as well as hosting screenprinting sessions so that drop-in visitors can make over their own bags, fabrics or clothes. Alicia Storie of ADesignStorie will lead a programme of workshops on sustainable interior design from a climate conscious tiny house installation that encourages the exploration of healthy materials. Visitors to The House of Wellbeing installation will also have an opportunity to discover the latest sustainable materials available to designers and makers. Donna Wilson will welcome explorers of all ages to discover the enchanted knitted forest which is home to a host of her beloved woolly creatures. Festival goers will also have the opportunity to make their own beasties with the guidance of Donna’s Dundee based Knit Shop team as waste wool becomes transformed into creatures of wonder. Finally Gabriella Marcella’s installation Challenging Uniformity merges play and performance with her colourful exploration of uniform design. With input from festival visitors, Challenging Uniformity will demonstrate creative expression, improvisation, activism, and customisation.
HYPER-LOCAL: 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of Dundee’s status as a UNESCO City of Design recognising the city’s diverse contributions to design in fields including comics, textiles, medical innovation and video games. One of a global network of 49 cities around the world, the HYPER-LOCAL exhibition celebrates those international connections with a display of over 50 design objects linked to their host cities. The participating cities are; Bilbao (Spain), Dundee (Scotland), Detroit (USA), Graz (Austria), Kortrijk (Belgium), Nagoya (Japan), Queretaro (Mexico), and Wuhan (China). Designs on show include Japanese eyewear from Nagoya, Mexican craft from Queretaro, sustainably pressed vinyl records from Detroit, lighting from Bilbao, Kortrijk, and Graz traditional masks from Wuhan and patterned furniture, stone and knitwear from Dundee.
Dundee Design Festival Gabriella Marcella Challenging Uniformity photo courtesy of Risotto Studio.
Dundee’s Design Community at the Festival
As the UK’s first and only UNESCO City of Design, Dundee has a diverse and vibrant design community. This year’s festival showcases design talent local to the city with 50 designers sharing new and existing work at the festival.
These include; Hannah Sabapathy’s Taxonomies patterned furniture and Linsey McIntosh & Gary Kennedy’s Dundee Cassies paving slabs for HYPER-LOCAL, BOOKENDS designs by Aymeric Renoud, Louise Forbes, Akiko Matsuda, Camillo Feuchter and Lauren Morsley, FRAMEWORK designs from Caitlin Dolan, Jo-AMI, Sandra Wilson, Rhona Jack, Yimou Huang and more.
Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) Graphic Design graduates will also see their work featured in Emerging Design x Real World Projects an exhibition of graphic design resulting from close partnership working between DJJCAD and Dundee Design Festival. 14 students contributed visual concepts for DDF festival signage and marketing with the winner receiving £2000 and a work placement with the festival team. To celebrate the graphic designers of tomorrow and to mark the partnership with DJCAD, the competition entries will be exhibited in a display of highly distinctive and expressive concepts for Scotland's design festival.
Ahead of the festival organisers reiterated their commitment to delivering one of the world’s most sustainable design festivals. Partnerships with V&A Dundee, MYB Textiles, Scott & Fyffe and Bard to repurpose exhibition materials, Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc to power the festival site with clean energy, and Ember to provide electric public transport, sit alongside commitments to using no more than 30% of new materials in the festival build, working with a reusable exhibition design palette and following a sustainability decision making matrix to ensure sustainability is put first in every aspect of decision-making.
Donna Wilson photo by Gareth Hacker
Dundee Design Festival is supported by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland, by EventScotland’s National Events Programme, the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and Northwood Charitable Trust. UNESCO City of Design Dundee is hosted by V&A Dundee and supported by city partners: Abertay University, Creative Dundee, Dundee City Council, Leisure & Culture Dundee and V&A Dundee.
Dundee Design Festival, Creative Director Dr Stacey Hunter said: “DDF24 is the place to explore an expanded view of design from the most exciting designers, makers and dreamers. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a snapshot of the ingenuity, talent and creative expression that underpins Scotland’s design community. It has been a privilege work on a national festival of contemporary design. Hosting the entire festival under one roof allows us to create a series of immersive experiences of design. Whether visitors want to get hands-on with design activities and workshops or be inspired by design talks and exhibitions, I can’t wait to see festival goers discover the multiplicity of ways design impacts our lives.”
Dundee Design Festival Executive Director Annie Marrs said: “Hosting Scotland’s biggest design event is a fitting way to celebrate Dundee’s 10th anniversary as the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design. The scale and ambition has built on the work of previous festivals and I’m excited to see Dundee’s design talent showcased alongside international design and work from across Scotland. Working with funders and partners across the city, in particular the team at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc has allowed Stacey and the Festival team to be generous and ambitious in programming this year’s festival. We’re delighted to be able to showcase so much of what makes Dundee a design destination.”
Alistair McAuley, Co-Founder, Timorous Beasties said: “Sustainable design is very important to us as a company and when approaching our installation for Dundee Design Festival we wanted to focus on the theme of reusing and recycling materials.
Our design concept centres on a maze of fabric, through which visitors will be guided through dramatic drops of material left over from previous projects - repurposed for the installation. The fabrics will be suspended between the roof of the factory and the floor and feature iconic hand printed floral designs, exaggerated and re-worked to give each piece a new lease of life.
At the entrance of the maze, a print table made from recycled wood will offer visitors the opportunity to handprint their own fabrics.”
Clive Gillman, Director of Creative Industries at Creative Scotland said: “Anticipation is building as we approach the festival and its exhibition in the vast space under the giant turbines on the Dundee skyline. Presentations of Scotland’s design talent, such as Donna Wilson and Timorous Beasties, alongside newly commissioned works and the best of the international UNESCO City of Design partners, all directly accessible by electric bus, make this a very exciting event in a very special location – not to be missed.”
Paul Bush OBE, Director of Events, VisitScotland said: “We are proud to support Dundee Design Festival through EventScotland’s National Events Funding Programme. Scotland’s largest design festival is a vibrant celebration of the city’s status as a hotspot for creativity, while also commemorating its10th anniversary as a UNESCO City of Design. In addition to championing Scottish and international design with an ambitious programme of exhibitions, events, talks and workshops, it is also leading the way in its commitment to sustainable development through several key initiatives. Festivals like these, that deliver sustainable impact and profile for Scotland, are an integral part of our country's events portfolio.”
Anne Anderson, Chair of the UK National Commission for UNESCO, said: “Creative Cities are an integral part of the UK’s UNESCO designation network, and each of the 13 current UK Creative Cities places imagination and creative talent at the heart of their strategy for economic and social development. Dundee is unique being the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design, and we are excited that the city will be celebrating what will be its 10th anniversary as such, in a truly appropriate and magnificent way with the Design Festival.
We are particularly delighted that this year’s festival will be bringing together a selection of design objects from other cities that form the global UNESCO Creative Cities Network, thus honouring the organisation’s values of international collaboration, friendship and peace.”
Listings Information
- Dundee Design Festival 2024
- 23 to 29 September
- Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc, Baldovie Rd, Dundee DD4 8UQ
Full programme of free events and exhibitions announced in July 2024. dundeedesignfestival.com.
Background
Why is Dundee the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design?
Dundee Design Festival 2024 (DDF 24) will celebrate the city's 10th anniversary as a UNESCO City of Design by working with local and international partners to present an ambitious and optimistic programme of design-centred exhibitions, events and projects. Dundee was the first and remains the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design, one of a global network of 49 cities around the world. This status recognises the city’s diverse contributions to design in fields including comics, textiles, medical innovation and video games. In addition to hosting public facing design events like the biennial festival, Dundee is the only city in Scotland to have its own dedicated design museum; V&A Dundee as well as two leading art and design universities and Dundee & Angus College who co-founded the UK’s first Service Design Academy with Open Change. The city has a thriving Creative Industries sector with a variety of design related businesses.
About Dr Stacey Hunter
Stacey Hunter curates, writes and produces within a contemporary design context; her collaborative exhibitions and projects are known and appreciated for their unconventional approach and broad appeal. She is committed to the development of design culture in Scotland and enlivening design and craft discourses. Stacey founded Local Heroes to present the work of outstanding designers working in Scotland and collaborates with a diverse range of organisations from airports and cultural hubs to hotels, hospitals and design-led businesses.
Her PhD was awarded by The University of Edinburgh’s Architecture School in 2015. In 2017 V&A Dundee named her a Design Champion; in 2018 she won Creative Edinburgh’s Leadership Award and in 2019 she was selected by Cove Park; Arts Initiative Tokyo and Creative Residency Arita to visit Japan for two months as design curator in residence. Later that year she was a designer in residence at The Suttie Art Space in Aberdeen. During lockdown Hunter was a curator in virtual-residence at Edinburgh’s Design Informatics / Inspace Gallery. In 2021 she produced the critically acclaimed The Future of Home exhibition in Brompton Design District as part of London Design Festival. In 2022 Craft Scotland commissioned Hunter to produce ‘Sustaining Curatorial Careers’ a research report exploring the key role curators play in sustaining and innovating Scotland’s ecosystem for contemporary craft. In 2023 Hunter launched PROCESS, a professional development programme for a cohort of five designers. www.localheroes.design www.staceyhunter.com
About UNESCO City of Design Dundee
Dundee Design Festival 2024 is delivered by UNESCO City of Design Dundee. UNESCO City of Design Dundee is delivered through the Dundee Partnership and hosted by V&A Dundee.
Dundee was designated a UNESCO Creative City in 2014. As the UK’s first and only UNESCO City of Design, Dundee upholds the values of UNESCO and publicly champions our city’s commitment to placing design at the heart of our local development plans and to global cooperation working towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Dundee’s title recognises the small yet dynamic city with a strong cultural identity and a history of design, innovation and creativity. The city has time and time again focused on design and creativity to build sustainable economic growth. From the jute industry of the 19th & 20th Century through to post-war electrical and mechanical engineering, the city's design story includes household favourites the Beano and the Dandy, marmalade and Grand Theft Auto.
Today, Dundee is home to a cutting edge life sciences sector, a dynamic digital media industry, world-renowned higher education institutions and a vibrant creative industries sector. Dundee is a city which is bold, ambitious and committed to using design to help solve the challenges we face - locally and globally.
Currently there are 49 UNESCO Cities of Design, including Bangkok, Bilbao, Detroit, Graz, Helsinki, Kobe, Mexico City, Montreal,Singapore, Seoul and Wuhan.
UNESCO City of Design Dundee: https://cityofdesigndundee.com/
UNESCO Cities of Design Network: https://www.designcities.net/
About Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc
MSIP is a dynamic and creative home for innovators, manufacturers and skills leaders who are actively working towards reducing carbon emissions and fostering a cleaner, more sustainable future. They offer space to manufacture and scale up; business, skills and innovation support; and access to green energy from sustainable sources.
A joint venture with 3 partners: Michelin, Dundee City Council, and Scottish Enterprise. Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc (MSIP) was created to generate economic growth in Scotland and support a fair and just transition to a net zero economy. The 32-hectare site offers excellent physical and digital connectivity, and dynamic space for all sizes of businesses to locate. Hosting Dundee Design Festival as a venue partner is the organisation’s latest commitment to working in partnership to highlight Dundee as a centre for design and innovation.
About UNESCO Creative Cities
The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004 to promote cooperation among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. It is a global network of cities working towards the joint mission of placing creativity and cultural industries at the core of their urban development to make their cities safe, resilient, inclusive and sustainable.
There are 7 Creative City categories: Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts and Music and 13 UNESCO Creative Cities. Their work supports local communities and creates international opportunities, bringing an estimated £2.6 million in economic value to the UK. Recent research by the UK National Commission for UNESCO shows UNESCO projects can help build a greener, more equal and more peaceful world, while also creating financial value.
The cities form part of a larger global network made up of 350 member cities spanning seven artforms, with the city of Edinburgh, UK being the founding member of the Network.
Creative Cities work to strengthen the creation, production, distribution, and enjoyment of cultural goods and services at the local level, to promote creativity and creative expression especially among vulnerable groups, including women and young people, to enhance access to and participation in cultural life as well as enjoyment of cultural goods, and to strengthen the integration of cultural and creative industries and cultural tourism in local development plans.
UNESCO Creative Cities Network: https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/home
UK National Commission for UNESCO: www.unesco.org.uk
About Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland is the public body that supports culture and creativity across all parts of Scotland, distributing funding provided by the Scottish Government and The National Lottery. Further information at creativescotland.com. Follow us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Learn more about the value of art and creativity in Scotland and join in at www.ourcreativevoice.scot.
About Event Scotland
EventScotland is working to make Scotland the perfect stage for events by securing and supporting an exciting portfolio of sporting and cultural events. It provides funding opportunities and access to resources and information to develop the industry.
EventScotland is a team within VisitScotland’s Events Directorate, the national tourism organisation, alongside Business Events and Development teams. For further information about EventScotland, its funding programmes and latest event news, go to visitscotland.org/events.
Media contact
For further information, interview and image requests please contact Owen O’Leary, on 07815992658 or email [email protected]