Take a voyage of design discovery
Clock in and get hands on at ‘factory floor’ event
THE city that has been tipped to become Britain’s coolest, Dundee, is set to play host to its second design festival this bank holiday weekend. Located inside a former jute mill and print factory, the festival will follow the theme of ‘factory floor’, returning to West Ward Works, near the city centre.
The theme pays homage to the rich industrial heritage of Dundee – the UK’s only Unesco City of Design – during the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology 2017, and has taken inspiration from the extraordinary festival venue itself.
A former jute mill dating to 1806 and a printworks in operation for more than 60 years, West Ward Works was used to print and bind iconic comic book annuals, including the much-loved titles Beano, Beezer, Twinkle and Topper.
Breathing new life and activity into the vast space, Dundee Design Festival is inviting visitors to roll up their sleeves and try their hand at ‘making stuff’.
There are opportunities to try out new techniques and experiments with equipment, including 3D-printing, laser cutting, milling and casting.
There are a host of fantastic workshops to register for, including plaster casting, model making and carving jewellery. There is also a ‘Foldability’ workshop led by origami expert and Glasgow School of Art graduate Kyla McCallum, who will be teaching the complex technique of folding and pleating with fabrics.
The festival has dedicated a vast gallery space to an enormous installation of sculpture and print. Print City, produced by Print Festival Scotland, requires hundreds of people over the five days to get involved in building an abstract, interlocking model of Dundee, filling the gallery from floor to ceiling in a dazzling mix of pattern, colour and text.
Visitors will experience an assembly line of creative activity at the festival.
The dynamic ‘Factory Floor’ exhibition brings together 14 international designers, from Dundee to Detroit, whose work combines traditional industrial processes with handmade techniques. They can follow an eye-bending decorative plaster walkway by Chalk, see innovations in 3D-printing in jewellery and furniture design, and get up close to a miniature landscape of hand-built ceramics by James Rigley and Dawn Youll, with objects that recall smoke stacks, girders and bits of broken-down machinery.
There are also elegant designs by the celebrated Studio Glithero which, in one project, manages to connect the processes of textile weaving with mechanical pipe organ music. Dundee Design Festival invites singers of all abilities to come along to West Ward Works and help form the Singer Machine Choir, a vast chorus of voices that will conjure the sounds of factories past and present.