Dundee design festival kicks off
The festival takes place in four locations across the city plus a fifth online digital 'design house'
Last updated 23rd Sep 2021
The latest edition of the biennial Dundee Design Festival opens today, and will run until Sunday 3rd October through four locations around the city and online.
The theme for this years festival is 'Every Where Design', exploring how design is an essential but often invisible part of people's lives. The festival is free to attend and has an online presence for audiences anywhere in the world to participate.
Held at four sites around Dundee, the festival is centred around five 'Design Houses'. They were created in collaboration with local communities and organisations to profile the value of design within our every day lives.
The locations of the design houses are a former pump station in Finlathen Park, a retail unit in the main shopping area of Stobswell, Hilltown Park situated in the neighbourhood of Hilltown to the north of the city-centre, the waterfront plaza surrounding V&A Dundee, and a Digital Design House online.
The online 'Digital Design House' is full of specially commissioned content exploring everyday objects, communities and historical features. It will include a 'Design Jargon Glossary' which is interviews with a dozen local and international designers explaining over 50 different design terms in a game-show format.
It will also include videos on 'Everyday Design Objects', telling the design stories of items such as the electric toothbrush. Alongside two 'Behavioural Design Games' created in partnership with inGame. The 'Digital Design House' will remain online and free to access beyond the festival.
At the Finlathen site, visitors can create their own zine, as well as upcycle clothing developed in collaboration with Badbish Designs (Sara Gillespie) and Kate Scarlet Harvey. Stobswell 'Design House' is a store where tokens are traded to select pieces and assemble a character, designed by Headless Greg.
Hilltown 'Design House' features a games system designed by Dr Lynn Love and Dr Paul Gault where visitors can create a new park game alongside a soundscape with audio from across the world, including sounds from other UNESCO cities. The final site at the waterfront plaza at the V&A allows visitors to explore the design process by running through the ball run designed by FifeX alongside Agency of None.
Participants can download or pick up trails to follow a design journey in each of the 'Design House' areas, as well as three activity sheets. Participants can also enjoy the design festival colouring book which highlights some of the fascinating design stories in Dundee.
Dundee Design Festival 2021 is delivered by UNESCO City of Design Dundee and produced by Agency of None, a design studio in Dundee run by Lyall Bruce and Ryan McLeod. Agency of None also produced the 2019 edition of the festival located in the Keiller Centre. The festival has been developed by a content team of designers and creatives, including four intern positions for early-stage career designers, who coordinated all the content for the 'Digital Design House'.
Ryan McLeod, producer of Dundee Design Festival 2021 said: "This year's theme is 'Ever Where Design' and it's all about trying to get people to notice the elements that are designed all around us. Essentially, we live in a world where pretty much everything, unless it's naturally occurring, has been designed.
"It's to try and pull out the really nice design stories and the little snipits and bits that you walk past everyday or the building that you don't appreciate as much as you could or the little things in the street and actually to tell the story of design within that.
"To get people to understand design a little bit more because, I think, what we're trying to do is very much not make a festival for designers. We want to make it for a much wider audience that maybe have never experienced design or maybe just want to come and understand it and learn more about it. Or just to have a fun experience and that's very much what the festival is about."
Annie Marrs, Lead Officer, UNESCO City of Design Dundee, said: "From the outset, we’ve always tried to ensure that Dundee Design Festival reflects the world we are living in, with content showing the ways in which design can impact on our day to day lives.
“From the vast industrial space of West Ward Works in 2017 to the underused retail units of the Keiller Centre in 2019, our choice of venue has been really important to highlight the local relevance of the festival and 2021 is another step on that journey.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the importance of our local areas, local services and communities. It wouldn’t make sense to hold DDF21 anywhere but within our neighbourhoods."
