We are excited to announce that we are being hosted at Bilbao Bizkaia Design Week 2019 as their guest city of honour!
Last night we were joined by Print Festival Scotland and Biome Collective at the opening ceremony where we launched our exhibition representing Dundee.
Reflecting the theme of Future Us! Design Driven Futures, we are thrilled to have restaged Print City which was first shown at Dundee Design Festival 2017 and to be exhibiting Shpeel, which represented Dundee at London Design Biennale 2018.
We were invited by our sister UNESCO City of Design, Bilbao to reflect on their 2019 theme of Future Us! Design Driven Futures and stage an exhibition in the huge 500 sqm Ensanche Building.
Print City celebrates our place through the eyes of the people who live there and know it best. Created by Print Festival Scotland, a collaborative project between DJCAD and DCA, local people’s drawings were hand printed onto hundreds of pieces of cardboard which was slotted together to create a vast cardboard city.
Through a digital interaction, Shpeel explores how we can influence the external space around us to reflect our internal emotional states. A play on the word “spiel” meaning to play or to speak; Shpeel was designed by Biome Collective as a tool to support young people in starting conversations about mental health.
The Bilbao Bizkaia Design Week is now in its fifth year and welcomes over 15,000 visitors to a range of conferences, exhibitions, workshops and talks. Dundee and Bilbao were designated as UNESCO Cities of Design in the same year and since then have had an ambition to work together on a design exhibition of this scale.
Councillor John Alexander, Leader of Dundee City Council who opened the Bilbao Bizkaia Design Week, said:
“One of the benefits of being part of this network is the opportunity to learn from each other. We have always taken inspiration from the visionary cultural regeneration of Bilbao. For Dundee to be invited as their 2019 guest city of honour has been really thrilling and I am delighted that Dundee designers have been able to participate. Our presence here is significant and I feel very proud to be representing Dundee at the official opening of the festival”
Bilbao Bizkaia Design Week 2019 will run from 14 – 28 November, with Print City and Shpeel open in the Ensanche Building from 10:00 – 20:00, Monday to Saturday.
