The Best of Scottish Design: Dundee Design Festival 2024

From 23-29 September, Dundee Design Festival will open its doors to visitors with a programme of free exhibitions, workshops, talks and events. Visitors will be able to experience the work of more than 180 designers all under one roof at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc, in the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design. Participating designers work in a vast array of disciplines, from furniture, interiors and homeware to jewellery, graphics, textiles and apparel. 

Stacey Hunter, this year’s festival director, tells me that one of the exhibitions which will be unveiled for the festival, titled MATERIALISE, will take shape as "a series of large-scale immersive experiences from four of Scotland’s most exciting design studios in one giant space." Visitors will be able to lose themselves in a patterned maze crafted by Glasgow-based interior designers Timorous Beasties and experience Gabriella Marcella’s joyful, uniform-themed installation titled Challenging Uniformity. They will also have the opportunity to see Alicia Storie’s climate-conscious tiny house interiors and Donna Wilson’s enchanted knitted forest. 

Meanwhile, another exhibition called FRAMEWORK has come about as the result of an open call to practitioners across the country. 71 exhibitors working in an array of disciplines will showcase their works – highlights will include a set of airline seats by Muirhead-based Jamie O’Donnell; a sculptural piece by Justine Watt made entirely from discarded coat hangers that were destined for landfill; and Marc Sweeney's Pepper Pepper Mill, made from a bio-resin filled with peppercorns that give the work a peppery scent. Hunter says she created the FRAMEWORK platform to "reflect the growing turn towards interdisciplinarity in design. More designers are working at the intersections of art, technology, craft and even urbanism and I wanted our programme to reflect Scotland's contemporary design landscape." Visitors will also be able to pick up a set of four limited edition zines written by the festival’s writer-in-residence Sam Gonçalves, which explores the festival’s site at the former Michelin Tyre Factory, alongside some of the more nuanced design stories from this year’s rendition of the festival. These can be found at the festival and at V&A Dundee.

I ask Hunter why Dundee is such a fantastic city for design and the significance of the festival being held there. She tells me: "In short: design leadership. Over time the effect of the UNESCO designation has been found in the quality and diversity of what is being produced in Dundee… Having a platform for one's work is especially important and Dundee has enjoyed a significantly higher profile with a new design museum (V&A Dundee), a very successful series of regular design marketplaces (Tea Green), two universities with excellent design courses and an annual programme of events delivered by the UNESCO team. This gives designers a sense of belonging and the ability to participate in meaningful projects and discourses."

The festival has been running since 2016, initiated by the UNESCO City of Design team as their flagship design event – it initially started out as an annual feature before moving to a biannual model. The festival team responded to COVID restrictions by spreading the festival across four community-based locations in 2021, with take-away materials for visitors to use to widen participation and access. However, for this year’s rendition, Hunter decided to host the festival under one roof – to make it easy for visitors "to see a multiplicity of design from jewellery, textiles and ceramics to graphics, lighting design and urbanism." The festival also acts as an eloquent showcase and advocate for Scotland’s design industries on the global stage: "Seeing so many different forms of Scottish design side by side will showcase just how rich Scotland’s design scene is. As someone who has been working with designers in Scotland for over 15 years I’m excited to provide a bigger platform for the country’s design talent and help visitors discover it in this festival format for the first time."

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Dundee Design Festival, Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc, 23-29 Sep, Mon-Sun 10am-6pm (10am-7pm on Thu 26 Sep)