Last week the UK’s first UNESCO City of Design signed a City Values agreement to show Dundee’s commitment to using design to improve people’s lives.

Organisations from the NHS, police and fire service to the council, college and universities signed this agreement – to use design to improve the lives of its citizens and sustainably grow the local economy.

Dundee is the first city in Scotland to make this commitment across its public sector agencies – and invites everyone in the city to get involved.

Creative Dundee is keen to see the local creative and arts sector take a lead as it is so wide-reaching and impacts all aspects of city life – social, cultural and economic. We think the City Values agreement is a great way of highlighting these strengths by using design to improve the future of Dundee and its citizens.

We’re particularly keen to see local businesses and the public sector get behind the City Values agreement – ensuring more local commissioning of creative work, which we hope ultimately leads to more people choosing to stay or relocate to Dundee.

Companies, organisations and creative practitioners based in Dundee are invited to show their commitment to the City Values, these include:

– promoting social justice and inclusion;
– raising aspirations and creating opportunities across all of our communities;
– involving our communities in collaboratively designing services and solutions;
– championing high quality design, covering place, products and processes;
– learning from local, national and international designers;
– supporting the creative and commercial success of local designers;
– growing our economy through design-led business innovation.

The full City Values agreement is available from the UNESCO City of Design Dundee website – you can download, sign and return it and the team will send you the UNESCO City of Design Dundee logo to show and demonstrate your support.

Visit the City of Design website to find out more about the designation: www.dundeecityofdesign.com

There are currently 15 other UNESCO Cities of Design around the world which include:
– Beijing, China
– Berlin, Germany
– Bilbao, Spain
– Buenos Aires, Argentina
– Curitiba, Brazil
– Graz, Austria
– Helsinki, Finland
– Kobe, Japan
– Montréal, Canada
– Nagoya, Japan
– Saint-Étienne, France
– Seoul, Republic of Korea
– Shanghai, China
– Shenzhen, China
– Turin, Italy