Updates: The Fabric project which help form Dundee’s Creative Industries Strategy has been relaunched into a creative leadership programme for the city in December 2018. Read more about Fabric 2018 – 2019 here.
Throughout Scotland’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016, Creative Dundee ran a new peer project Fabric Dundee bringing creative practitioners and businesses together to strategically develop the future of the creative sector in the city and benefit those living, studying and working in and around the city.
Although Dundee has a strong creative ecology (you can read more about this here), there are areas which could be further improved for the sector to thrive over the next few years. The project aims to support Dundee’s active community in drafting a creative industries strategy for the city, by involving those who will be impacted by it.
Creating a strategic plan isn’t about generating yet another document to sit in a filing cabinet, for us it’s really only about creating action and finding ways to support initiatives in and around the city, by joining everything up more. It should reflect a vision and plan that is dynamic, focused on the sector mixed economy and developing sustainable employment and businesses.
This strategy will also be jointly shaped with the local and national agencies who support the sector, and aims to complement the city’s other strategies such as: Dundee Cultural Strategy 2015 – 2025, Economic Strategy And Action Plan 2013 – 2017, and Single outcome agreement for Dundee 2013 – 2017.
Creative Dundee invited a group representing some of the many creative disciplines which make up Dundee’s impressive scene to come together to share ideas, inspirations and experiences. These discussions, taking place from March to June 2016, are prompted by emerging themes on Dundee’s creative industries from previous discussions led by Creative Dundee.
Because Fabric Dundee aims to build a collective intelligence for the city’s thriving creative sector and requires to be driven by people who are actively interested in the direction of the city, Creative Dundee very much looks forward to hearing from you – please follow link below!
Fabric Dundee feedback and blogs:
Read the findings from the project’s initial discussions and share your insights here! The discussions focused on the challenges and opportunities for the city’s creative sector
Read the findings from the project’s second session here! The discussions focused on what success will look like for the creative sector of the city in 2020.
Read the blog from our study visit to Edinburgh’s creative hubs here.
Dundee’s Creative Industries Strategy 2017 – 2021:
Creative Dundee has led the development of the city-wide Creative Industries Strategy 2017 – 2021, designed in collaboration with the creative sector through Fabric and the agencies which support them. In 2015, Creative Dundee set up and has since chaired the creative industries stakeholder group, which includes 25 local and national agencies who have a remit for supporting the creative sector and have contributed to the development of this strategy.
Given the unique opportunities presented at this point in time for the city and its economy, this blueprint is crucial to further helping define the ‘Dundee approach’ to supporting its creative sector. This approach is significant, as a city which creates participative ways for its communities to shape and influence how Dundee and its creative sector is defined. Now is the right time to launch this blueprint, building on the enthusiasm and energy felt across the city, which was designed to engage the city’s creative communities during Scottish Government’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016.
Dundee’s Creative Industries Strategy has been launch on 17th October 2017 at DCA. The Strategy can be viewed, downloaded and even listened to online – it includes the ambitions of those working and studying in the city’s creative sector and the actions which should be taken to make the sector stronger over the next 5 years, from 2017 – 2021.