The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
£1m rescue package to help cultural recovery
EXCLUSIVE: Cash shared by five Dundee attractions as visitors to return
A £1 million post-lockdown rescue package will be shared among five of Dundee’s biggest cultural groups ahead of restrictions being eased next week.
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee Heritage Trust, Dundee Rep, Dundee Science Centre and the V&A museum will each benefit from the Dundee Cultural Recovery Fund, set up to help the city’s most popular attractions as they finally reopen to the public.
The fund was set up by the V&A as a way to ensure the city’s main cultural organisations worked together to access funding during the pandemic.
The group approached the Northwood Charitable Trust, which offered £500,000 if the five organisations could match the total within a year.
Tim Allan, chairman of V&A Dundee, said: “To get people to visit, to get people in hotels and shops and restaurants and bars, the big attractions need to be open.
“To make sure that we did not fail the city, we had to raise money.”
Five of Dundee’s cultural organisations are planning their road out of lockdown, thanks to a £1 million fund.
The Dundee Cultural Recovery Fund is a joint enterprise led by V&A Dundee to benefit five organisations in the city, the other four being Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee Heritage Trust (Discovery Point and Verdant Works), Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre, and Dundee Science Centre.
At the beginning of the first lockdown Tim Allan, chairman of V&A Dundee, said he was determined that culture had to be ready to reopen almost seamlessly once doors could open again safely.
“No one knew that it would take this long, of course,” he said.
“It’s been welldocumented that we did get some government money to help us, but the reality is we have to help ourselves as well.”
With V&A Dundee’s track record of successfully engaging with donors and funders, Tim feared there was a danger it would hoover up all the assets other people would be trying to access.
“To make sure that we did not fail the city, we had to raise money,” he said.
“The way to tackle this was as a group.
“I spoke with the leader of the council and asked where the maximum impact would be in terms of Dundee in post-covid recovery mode.
“To get people to visit, to get people in hotels and shops and restaurants and bars, the big attractions need to be open.
“Then I spoke with the chairs of the other four organisations and, when we looked at the financial situation, everyone realised that it was going to be difficult to get our heads around a catastrophe on this scale.”
The group approached the Northwood Charitable Trust. The aims of the group were in line with the trust’s main funding themes of addressing deprivation, poverty and inequality; advancing educational attainment; progressing physical and mental health and wellbeing; supporting community, heritage and cultural enrichment.
“They said yes,” Mr Allan added.
“We were offered a maximum of £500,000 from the trust if we could match it. Our job was to do that between the five of us – and we managed to do that in the year.”
Christopher Thomson, a trustee of the Northwood Charitable Trust, said: “Enhancing cultural enrichment in our communities is one of the key objectives of the Northwood Charitable Trust, and we are therefore really pleased to support the Dundee Cultural Recovery Fund.
“Dundee is renowned for its rich creative heritage, and our many cultural attractions will play an essential role in the recovery of the city’s local economy in the months ahead.
“This important collaboration will help not only protect several of our leading cultural organisations and the jobs they create, but also help them to grow and develop for the future.”
The donors making up the remaining £500,000 range from large trusts and organisations to small individual donations, down to pocket-money contributions from Dundee children.
“What has touched me hugely about the fundraising is the spectrum of people who have funded us. Even Dundee bairns. It gives us the impetus to make sure that when we open, we open better than when we closed,” Tim said.
Among the donors are Tim and Kim Allan, Alliance Trust, Al-maktoum Community Grant Fund, Dundee City Council, Morris and Joyce Leslie, Alasdair Locke, the RJ Larg Family Trust, Leng Charitable Trust, Lethendy Charitable Trust, the Mathew Trust, MHA Henderson Loggie, Tay Charitable Trust, Eric Young, and a number of anonymous donors.
Dundee is the only city in the UK where cultural organisations have created such a united front on the road to recovery.
Beth Bate, director at Dundee Contemporary Arts, said that it has also created a template for working together in the future, not only with the five organisations benefiting from this fund, but a much wider range of partners.
“I am particularly proud because it’s something that only Dundee has done,” she said. “I don’t know of anywhere else that has worked like this, and it’s been such an enthusiastic collaboration.
“This is a genuinely huge cash contribution, which will help support these organisations over the uncertain months ahead. We’ve been able to pull together and make the case for the role that culture has in the city, not only socially but economically in terms of the jobs we support and the income we generate.”
Tim Allan added that this working together is typical of the city, which he describes as “outstanding on common purpose”.
“We have an outstanding third sector – particularly those community groups who work with hard-toreach communities,” he said.
“None of these organisations are about things in boxes; they are about enriching people’s lives.
“And don’t we all need that after the past year?
“We couldn’t afford not to be ready to open and do that.”