The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Ambition for nine Edens across city
Project aims to attract visitors to Dundee’s ‘hidden gems’
The Eden Project will not just be one visitor attraction in Dundee but several, The Courier can reveal.
It plans to span multiple locations in the city in a bid to attract millions of visitors.
Eden intends to form the “nine new guilds of Dundee” – with each having its own “embassy”.
Some of these will be temporary popups, others will be permanent in a bid to create a “must see” trail of attractions.
The ambitious project could be delivered as early as 2024 with hopes it could impact the city in a similar way to V&A Dundee.
Eden Project chief executive David Harland said the trail would “encourage people to get to parts of the city they hadn’t seen before”.
He said: “In Dundee we found a city looking forward to the future. We also found there are hidden gems.”
The Eden Project visitor attraction in Dundee will span several locations to contain the city’s “nine new guilds”.
Plans are well advanced following a six-month feasibility study last year, which has not been publicly revealed.
But Eden chief David Harland has dropped several clues about how the eco-visitor attraction will work in Dundee.
The plan is to create the “nine new guilds of Dundee” – with each having its own identity and embassy. Some locations will be permanent, some will be pop-up.
Together they will create a trail of sites, encouraging people to explore different parts of the city.
In an online presentation, Mr Harland said: “We haven’t announced the outcomes of our feasibility study, but I am going to hint at a few things and leave you wanting more.
“We hope to be out in the next couple of months with specific sites and information from the feasibility.
“We have come up with the concept of Dundee’s nine new guilds. Things like growers and navigators, myth makers and alchemists.
“We wanted to recognise that these trades, these guilds, had their place in the future of Dundee.
“Each of these trades, these guilds, could have their own connection with communities and they may well have their own embassies which could pop up from time to time. Some may be permanent.
“They would encourage people to get to parts of the city they hadn’t seen before.
“These are little hints of what we are planning.”
The proposed themes are: Healers, Growers, Navigators, Myth makers, Noticers, Alchemists, Celebrators, Menders and Re-sourcerors.
Together, the guilds would create a trail, with programmes to encourage visiting them all. They would offer seasonal and non-seasonal programming.
But Mr Harland said the upcoming proposals would also have a “big bang” to drive people into Dundee in the form of permanent guild halls.
“One of the problems is it’s difficult having a dispersed model when you do what we do,” he added during the Invest in Dundee webinar.
“So we had to come back to thinking about these guilds. About how they interact with spaces. How do we give people reasons to come to the city? The big bang as well.
“Then you get into having guild halls – in the plural. These will be encompassed within buildings but very much telling the story of our interdependence on the natural world.”
In artists’ impressions, one of the guild halls is called The Look Out with a huge screen overlooking the Port of Dundee.
Another, named The Lush Bunker, shows plants growing from floor to ceiling. The third drawing, called The Seam, has a focus around mining.
Mr Harland said he was hopeful the Eden Project could be in Dundee in 2024 – the first time a date for the project has been revealed.
This is also the timeframe for the proposed e-sports arena at Dundee’s waterfront.
Eden hopes to fund the project through a mixture of private and public funding.
The impact of Eden’s Cornwall attraction has been huge on the local economy.
In the past 20 years, more than 20 million people have gone through its doors, generating £2 billion for the economy.
Hopes are high of an impact on Dundee on a similar scale to the V&A.
Mr Harland said: “We have talked and talked to people, literally hundreds of interviews. What a passionate place Dundee is and Dundonians are.
“We found a city looking to the future. We also found there are hidden gems.
“We took inspiration from history. People talk about jute, jam and journalism and we wondered about what else we wanted to add into its future.
“People are very much looking to the future and trying to drive equality across the city while building on some of the heritage that’s there.”