We are thrilled to launch our 2019 Dundee Design Festival theme: LIVEABLE / LOVEABLE CITIES

The 2019 festival will explore and play with the similarities and differences between the concept and understanding of Liveable and Loveable in the context of the cities in which we live.

To build and inform the 2019 programme, we are asking you to answer 2 questions:

What would make your city more liveable?

What would make your city more loveable?

You can answer the questions for yourself here: www.dundeedesignfestival.com

Deadline is 6 Dec 2018!

As a member of the global UNESCO City of Design Network, we aren’t just looking for responses from Dundee, but from around the world. In a first for the Dundee Design Festival, our two questions have been translated into six other languages – each chosen for their prominence in Dundee and within the UNESCO City of Design Network – Polish, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, French and Spanish.

We believe that design has the opportunity to impact our lives positively and alongside showcasing beautiful design, the festival has always told the stories of how design changes lives. As a festival, we want to use our public platform to have these discussions and to explore what as a city and as designers, we can and need, to do better. Curated by Agency of None, Dundee Design Festival 2019 will try to uncover some of those common feelings about the cities in which we live through a programme of workshops, events, exhibitions and talks. Dates and location tbc, stay tuned for further announcements!

Students’ Sociometer named design success!

Here at UNESCO City of Design Dundee, we are delighted that a device designed to measure the amount of time people spend on their phones in a traditional Scottish pub has won an award in the 2017 Shenzhen Design Award for Young Talents.

Their device, called the ‘Sociometer’, has the look of a seismograph and records the bandwidth data being used by phones on graph paper. Visually capturing how many patrons are on their phones rather than indulging in a pint and patter.

The team, Tiernan Haugh, Jamie Spratt and Campbell Scanlan, were all currently studying at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD), the University of Dundee. They were inspired by the 120-year-old Speedwell Bar, known locally as Mennies, to capture this social phenomenon.

Installed into the Speedwell bar for a short time, the ‘Sociometer’ was able to show how even at peak times people were still attached to their phones.

Tiernan, a digital-interaction design student, said, “People anecdotally talk about how younger generations are becoming more content spending time on their phones than indulging in conversation, so we wanted to design something to measure that.

“We specifically chose the Speedwell Bar because it was recently voted Dundee’s ‘Best Community Bar’ –we thought it was fitting to install a device that could reduce the distraction of our phones by highlighting the amount we use them in a social setting.”

Jamie Spratt, product design student, said, “It’s called the ‘Sociometer’ because it shows how social people actually are in traditional boozers. It’s a conversation starter and is able to capture how different generations use Scottish pubs.”

Campbell Scanlan, product design student, said, “We are delighted to win such a great international award for craftsmanship. We are excited to keep working together as designers and have high hope of installing the ‘Sociometer’ back into Speedwells.”

The three students were invited to Shenzhen to accept their award in person and were accompanied by UNESCO City of Design Dundee Desk Officer, Andy Truscott. Other winners included teams from other UNESCO design cities Puebla, Detroit, Wuhan, St-Etienne and Beijing.

Anna Day, Manager of UNESCO City of Design Dundee, said, “We are delighted by this success and it was great that all three of the designers went to Shenzhen to collect the award in person. They were the only team from the UK to reach a top spot.

“We already have strong links with the UNESCO City of Design team in Shenzhen and this further strengthens the bond. We look forward to working with the Chinese Cities of Design in the future, on more collaborations.”

Dundee, the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design, is set to host its second design festival from Wed 24 – Mon 29 May 2017.

Following the success of 2016’s four-day celebration of world-class design, Dundee Design Festival returns to West Ward Works for a stimulating series of workshops, performances, exhibitions and talks during an extended five-day run in May. In 2017, the festival will use the rich backdrop of this former print factory as context in which to describe what making means now.

This year’s theme is ‘Factory Floor’. The theme acknowledges the global shift in design practice where designers and makers are blending forms of production – a mix of craftsmanship and industrial processes to create a hybrid of the very old and the very new.

“We’re interested in exploring the connection between the traditional view of working factories and assembly lines together with contemporary design processes, materials and tools,” says festival producer Siôn Parkinson.

The theme also pays homage to Dundee’s rich industrial heritage during Scotland’s 2017 Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology and the growing movement towards re-purposing former industrial spaces as arts venues and studios.

For over 60 years, West Ward Works was home to the printing and binding of DC Thomson comic book annuals, including titles such as The Beano, Beezer, Twinkle and Topper. The factory closed its doors in 2010 and was soon emptied of its machinery leaving a series of vast open spaces that since 2016 has become home to the Dundee Design Festival.

Read more on the programme below:

Exhibition: Factory Floor

On Wednesday 1 March, Dundee Design Festival announce a nationwide call for designers and makers to take part in a vast installation, ‘Factory Floor’.

‘Factory Floor’ celebrates makers and their machines. Forming the centrepiece to the festival and featuring designers whose work embraces experimental processes and innovation in materials, this exhibition marks a moment in contemporary design and post-industrial production.

Playful, bold, and unpredictable, ‘Factory Floor’ will showcase the new objects and ideas emerging from studios and workshops from the UK and around the globe. The exhibition will confidently mix craft and design, products and prototypes, models and maquettes, the tried-and-failed, and the interventions and errors that find their way in to digital techniques and make for radical forms.

Factory Residency Programme

In 2017, the festival is partnering with Make Works, an open-source online directory of working factories in Scotland, on the newly launched ‘Dundee Design Festival Factory Residency Programme’.

Make Works was founded in 2014 by Fi Duffy-Scott after travelling over 3,000 miles from Shetland to the Scottish Borders to visit and map Scottish manufacturers in a mission to help make fabrication in Scotland more accessible for artists, designers and makers.

The Factory Residency Programme will select and match three designers with Scottish based manufacturers. Over six months, the residency will allow designers time and space with specialist fabricators to test new ideas, improvise with materials and experiment with different production techniques. Deadline for applications is Monday 6th March.

The successful designers will be selected from a 3-way panel including Make Works, design, fabrication and installation experts Old School Fabrications, and design studio Tom Pigeon with an announcement scheduled for Monday 13th March.

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

Ahead of the final festival programme, Siôn Parkinson has revealed some of the other 2017 festival highlights:

Print City

For the full five days of the festival, Print Festival Scotland, a collaboration between Dundee Contemporary Arts and the University of Dundee will take over an entire room at West Ward Works to produce an enormous installation of sculpture and print, Print City.

Dundee has a rich history and vibrant culture of print and printmaking that will be celebrated in this project.

Print City will encourage hundreds of people to get involved in creating an abstract and interlocking model of the city that will fill the gallery from floor to ceiling in a dazzling mix of pattern, colour and text.

Wee Works digital fabrication studio

Visitors to Dundee Design Festival will be invited to try their hand at making anything they imagine at the festival’s pop-up digital fabrication studio, Wee Works. In partnership with MAKLab, Wee Works will house a range of equipment available for visitors to experiment with including 3D printing, laser cutting and CNC milling along with a virtual reality suite.

MAKLab was founded in 2012 by architect Richard Clifford to allow people to access the latest production technologies. With a network of spaces across Scotland and connections around the globe, MAKLab allows designers and makers to trade skills and resources with each other.

Singer Machine Choir

For music lovers, the Singer Machine Choir – an enormous choir of community singers from across Dundee – will perform the sounds of factory machinery, while a series of large-format inkjet printers respond to their voices in real time.

Siôn Parkinson, said: “The festival is a mass assembly of makers, thinkers and creators. As a progressive 21st century city, and the UK’s first and only UNESCO City of Design in recognition of the contribution the city has made to design worldwide, we’re really proud that these conversations about design are happening right here in Dundee.”

Clive Gillman, Director of Creative Industries, Creative Scotland, said: “Creative Scotland is delighted to be supporting the Dundee Design Festival 2017, an event that will help showcase the distinct and progressive ambitions of Scotland’s design community. This year’s theme of the ‘Factory Floor’ is compelling and timely in a world where few of us ever get to be close to the manufacturing process, but rely on designed and manufactured goods every day.

“The Dundee Design Festival is a unique event in the UK’s only City of Design. It is a festival of international quality and significance that is important to design professionals, but which is also publically engaging and linked to the communities of Dundee. Creative Scotland recognises the importance of the role the festival performs in showcasing Scottish design talent, and supporting the evolution of the work of designers and makers.”

Stuart Turner, Head of EventScotland, said: “The Festival is a great celebration of Dundee’s status as a UNESCO City of Design, and we are delighted to be supporting it again through our National Funding Programme.”

“Scotland is the perfect stage for cultural events and the Festival’s diverse and interactive programme is testament to that fact, giving visitors the opportunity to discover innovations in the field, whilst also experiencing the city’s rich industrial design and print heritage in the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology.”

For further information about Dundee Design Festival and for 2017 festival programme updates please visit here

#dundeedesignfest

In 2015, the annual Dundee Literary Festival featured it’s very own UNESCO City of Design Dundee inspired festival theme.

This celebrated and explored the relationship between design and literature: from the history, social, educational and cultural significance of the iconic Ladybird books to a very special appearance from Great British Bake Off 2013 winner Frances Quinn, known for her love of design as well as baking.

Design highlights of the festival included:

Word Into Art, Art On Words – How does art inspire the world of words? A discussion with Graham Domke, Beth McDonough (both DCA) & Kirsty Gunn

Make A Book! – Interactive workshop with Natalie Russell

Lunchbox Talks: Designing Stories – Thought-provoking short talks every day of the festival by great minds from the University of Dundee

Future Book – Discussion on the future of the book, in partnership with Electric Bookshop.

Adventures In Design (In partnership with V&A Dundee) – Comic illustrator Will Morris and graphic designer/illustrator David Mackenzie, the dynamic duo behind V&A Dundee’s comic strip hoardings, discuss comics, graphic novels and the eternal hunt for inspiration.

The Cover Story:  – a closer look at the art of book covers, from first beginnings to the present digital moment and what makes good design. In association with the Dorothy Dunnett Society.

Ex Libris Book Fair – Book Fair in partnership with Ess Publications, featuring small presses, indie comic creators, and artist book makers.

Frances Quinn: Quintessential Baking – Frances Quinn is the winner of the Great British Bake Off 2013. She brings a love of and flair for design to her unique and unforgettable bakes.

Living Landscapes | Derek Robertson – Derek Robertson’s Living Landscapes portrays an intimate, artist’s-eye view of explorations of the countryside and encounters with enchanting and dramatic wild creatures, capturing the exhilarating experience of watching the wildlife that he finds in his travels.

Ladybird by Design – Celebrating 100 years of Ladybird books and the cultural, educational and social impact they’ve had over the years.

Dundee Literary Festival 2015 runs until Sunday 25th October. More details on the festival can be found here