Factory Shop

Reform Street, Dundee, May 18-27

After a successful two years with its events at the West Ward Works industrial site, Dundee Design Festival will take a year off this year, with the intention of coming back even bigger and better in 2019.

In the meantime, Dundee Design Month has a slate of events throughout May, with the Design Festival making a cameo appearance when they open their Factory Shop on Reform Street this weekend.

“Our year off is partly because of the scale of the first two festivals,” says Dundee Design Festival’s producer Sion Parkinson.

“We need to think about what our creative direction is with the festival, with the ultimate aim to create a biennial event.

“So we’ll have one really big event one year, and the alternate year will be an opportunity to take stock, to plan, and to see what’s the biggest impact that the design festival can have on Dundee.”

This year’s project is partly intended as a conclusion to the festival residency programme launched last May, which paired three designers with three manufacturers based in Scotland.

“What we wanted to do was follow up on these designers and see what they’ve made,” says Sion.

“One of the principles last year was to see how design could be used to reignite redundant or stalled development projects or empty buildings, so with support from Dundee City Council we’ve taken over a shop on Reform Street.

“People won’t be able to buy things in the shop, but rather it’s a place where they can come in for free and look behind the curtain of the design process, to see how designers make and experiment.

“It’s also somewhere we can show how shop units might be used differently, which we’re particularly excited about.”

Of the designers showing their work, Glasgow-based Florence Dwyer was paired with Turnberry Rug Works in Ayrshire to experiment with what Sion calls “drawing with yarn” on three large tapestries, while ceramicist Dawn Youll was paired with the glassblowing workshop Glasgow University to make highspec glass and ceramic pieces.

Also, artist and musician Tommy Perman was paired with Professor Simon Kirby, whose subject is the evolution of language.

They have created prototype singing sound devices which Sion describes as “singing glass, to essentially turn the shopfront into a large speaker which responds to the light outside and sings to passersby”.

As well as the Factory Shop, there are many other Dundee Design Month events happening throughout May including What is a Museum?

You can look but you can’t buy as the festival presents Factory Shop from a venue in Reform Street.