Dundee Design Festival 2021
13 December 2021  

Dundee Design Festival 2021

Dundee Design Festival 2021 took place from 23 September – 3 October across four physical locations and online.

Produced by returning Design Studio, Agency of None, the theme for Dundee Design Festival 2021 was Every Where Design, exploring the hidden and unusual design that exists all around us. The festival was centred around five ‘Design Houses’ which were each created in collaboration with local communities and organisations to profile the value of design within our everyday lives.

The locations of the Design Houses were Hilltown Park situated in the neighbourhood of Hilltown to the north of the city-centre, a retail unit in the main shopping area of Stobswell, a former pump station in Finlathen Park, the waterfront plaza surrounding V&A Dundee, and a Digital Design House online for audiences anywhere in the world to experience.

You can explore Dundee Design House online here

What-is-Design
from Agency of None

From Saturday 18th December 2021 – Sunday 16th January 2022, you can visit Every Where Design at V&A Dundee’s Weston Studio.

Pick up a waterfront design trail or family-friendly activity sheet, take a seat in the studio and enjoy some of the videos created for this year’s festival, which  explore the surprising and interesting ways design exists in our everyday lives.

Visit V&A Dundee’s website here for more information including museum opening hours.

  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
  • Dundee Design Festival 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATHRYN RATTRAY

If you weren’t able to visit Dundee Design Festival 2021’s 4 physical Design Houses, you can find out more about each of them and the hands on activities that took place by visiting the website here, following the festival’s Instagram and Twitter accounts and viewing our Flickr album here.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who was involved in delivering Dundee Design Festival 2021. You can view the full team in our festival map here

 

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18 December 2020  

2020 Round Up

A round up each of the projects that we delivered during 2020!

We would like to thank each of the organisations that we partnered up with to deliver a number of projects throughout 2020, the designers who have worked with us and contributed their ideas, and to the public for engaging in all of the work we delivered and supported. It was a challenging year in many ways and we were pleased that we could continue to support Dundee based artists and designers during the pandemic, using design as a positive tool for bringing about positive change.

 

You can view our Annual Report for 2020/2021 here

Back in March when we faced a national lockdown, we brought back The Design Gameshow with Ryan Mcleod of Agency of None, actor Chris O’Mara and comedian Andy Bullick, streamed live through our Instagram stories. We also saw the return of We Dundee, developed in partnership with Creative Dundee and Agency of None, where we asked Dundee citizens what had surprised them during these times and what should happen next for our city.
Sadly we had to cancel Dundee Design Parade due to restrictions, but our brilliant team of workshop leaders created online workshops that young people could get involved in from home.
We developed the popular Sunny Dundee Face Coverings with Halley Stevensons and Dundee City Council, designed by Pamela Scott and stitched by a brilliant team of speedy makers!
During the summer of 2020, we partnered up with Sustrans’ Scotland Spaces For People programme and Dundee City Council to pedestrianise Union Street with input from local businesses thanks to Service Design Academy. The iconic design was created by Callum Laird.

We were thrilled to launch the first volume of CODE Souvenir Dundee as both a paper and online catalogue, which promotes the work of Dundee based designers available to buy as gifts for both tourists and local people!

Late in the year, selected bike racks were installed across the city as a result of Dundee Cycling Forum’s competition where we paired up local designers with young people from across Dundee. We have also been working with Urban Foresight to commission local designers to reimage electric charger feeder pillars in the city centre.

Finally we rounded up the year by partnering up with Dundee City Council’s Events team and V&A Dundee to brighten up empty shop windows with Christmas-tree inspired displays created by local artists and designers.

Unesco Dity of Design
Union Street. Photography provided by Sustrans Scotland.
Code Souvenir Dundee
CODE Souvenir Dundee Vol.1 Catalogue

It was also a pleasure to virtually meet with all of our international sister Cities of Design and extended Creative Cities during virtual convenings, where we had valuable discussions and were inspired by projects from across the world.