Dundee’s Designer Christmas Trees 2023

In cities all around the world, festive tree displays are a highlight of the season. Beautiful and inspiring trees are created by designers who combine festive traditions and contemporary design.

In 2022, partnership with Dundee City Council, we commissioned five designers and creative practitioners to create bespoke and unique ‘Christmas Trees’ as part of Dundee’s Festive Celebrations. This year, we are pleased to bring back 3 of 2022’s trees, as well as four newly commissioned trees to add to our forest of innovative low-waste trees.

Rather than simply decorating a tree, the brief sought designers who would create a ‘tree’ which tells its own story. The ‘Christmas Tree’ was the central focus and inspiration, but final designs could have any form and we now have seven very different trees from the same brief.

Considering the environmental impact of large-scale festivities and the commitment from the city to celebrate our own living Christmas tree, this project centres the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle. All elements of the trees and their decorations are made from 100% reused or recycled materials.

Each tree has its own story in sustainability and design.

The trees will be on display outside City Churches from 16 November 2023 until 5 January 2024.

Read on for more information on each tree, and the designers behind them!

By Lee Johnstone and Aymeric Renoud.

Constructed with industrial waste, the Material Christmas Tree encourages viewers to separate their thoughts on what the waste was (air vent and lumber mill scrap) and think of the value of what it could be with considered and simple design. When we think of the material at its most basic, metal sheets and wooden beams, we remove the design barriers in place which come with the materials origin story. Lee and Aymeric’s intention was not to cover up, but transform what they know about the materials’ lives. The steel has been powder coated in a gradient to symbolise the seasonality of organic material in contrast to the properties of the steel. Though the wood used in this design is organic, it doesn’t need to be thrown away and regrown each year, it can form the ‘hidden’ supporting structure of a tree that is timeliness and lasts.

Dundee designers Suzanne Scott (WhimSicAL LusH) and Louise Forbes have enjoyed working on a few projects together over the years and saw this as a wonderful opportunity to combine their skills in a fun and playful way. Louise works with wood to create all sorts of things from beautifully carved spoons to large scale installations, including Dundee Design Festival. Suzanne is an illustrator who has created incredible pieces of public art over the years, including murals for Ninewells hospital, large scale 3D wooden dioramas, and bronze plaques for Discovery Walk. This wooden tree will be adorned with beautifully painted robins (representing winter wildlife), golden stars (representing light in the dark winter months), Toadstools (representing nature and often said to be the inspiration behind Christmas colours) and red hearts (for family and friends getting together to celebrate the time of year – love). The tree will be carefully constructed using wood and paint left over from previous projects, absolutely nothing is new! Both Louise and Suzanne hate waste so are delighted to have the chance to make use of some of their carefully stashed materials.

Caishnah Nevans’ tree perfectly embodies her love of vinyl records with her work surrounding music and memories. The tree reflects the important part music plays in festive memories as well as giving records a new lease of life.
Despite the recent revival in vinyl sales, it is still very much a medium that is easily damaged and therefore rendered useless. The records were sourced from record shops and auction sites throughout Scotland.
Caishnah returned to live in Dundee in 2021 to be closer to her family and help her dad close his business to retire. The fabrication materials came from her father’s scrap yard of building materials and working together made this a special retirement project, as well as reflection of the important of family at Christmas time.
The inspiration for the tree came from the record tile print which is used often in Caishnah’s designs for her brand Lola Polooza and her love of projects that spark musical memories and discussions around music.

Some of the local young people aged 16 -18 attending Helm came up with the idea of making wooden Christmas Trees made from recycled pallets.
When discussing the idea of this competition in 2022, some of the young people attending Helm thought of using the idea of last year’s tree and updating it to create the spiral design with the guidance and support of Helm Instructors, Barry – Furniture designer/maker background, Audrey Art Therapist/Artist and Malcolm, Spick and Spanners mechanic/welder.

Billy Hutchison graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in 2001 and currently lives/works as an Artist/Illustrator in Dundee, Scotland, mainly painting landscapes for private commissions. Having taken part in his first public Wild in Art trail Oor Wullie’s BIG Bucket Trail in 2019, Billy went on to take part in Dundee’s Festive Windows project in 2020, and the Rocket Round Leicester trail in 2021, and now Dundee’s Designer Christmas Trees too.
For Billy’s tree, he used recycled/used aluminium soft drink cans as they are malleable and light. The pyramid shape of the tree is inspired by the rooftops of turrets of buildings in Dundee and from 1960’s aluminium ornamental vintage Christmas trees.

By Lyle McCance.

The design of the tree is meant to be contemporary and clean. Using multiples of the same piece to create an eye-catching contemporary design. All the material is from the waste stream of the building industry. The concept behind the proposal is to highlight not the tree itself, but instead the absence of the tree. Hence why in this design there is actually no tree, just the space around it. The green accents on the end of the planks highlight what was once there, green, lush… but now gone. Deforestation is one of the greatest threats to our existence on the planet. Deforestation is a huge problem around the world, and is also an issue in the UK. Between 2001 & 2021, the UK lost 105.00 hectares of tree cover. This equates to a 6.9% decrease in tree cover. We should all be doing our bit to support local and global tree protection. Small changes all make a difference.

By Blair McCafferty.

Blair want to make his Christmas tree completely out of old skateboard decks. Mostly made from Canadian hard wood maple, Skateboards are a fantastic resource for upcycling. Blair works with skateboards a lot, he’s made many different kinds of work from skateboards, but making a Christmas tree from decks… This is a world first!

The  griptape is stripped off the skateboards to reveal the lovely fresh top ply colours and the scuffed up graphics of each used board combine to make a wonderful uniquely and stunningly visual piece.

Merry Christmas when it comes, from the UNESCO City of Design Dundee team!

The trees will be display outside City Churches until 5th January 2024.

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