Creative Dundee

Ignite Dundee 2016 Programme

A month long festival of culture and creativity will spark into life this May across the city of Dundee. Ignite, Dundee’s Festival of Creativity runs from Tuesday 3 to Monday 30 May 2016 and is packed full of visual art, design, craft, performances and degree shows at venues across the city.

The new programme for this year’s festival was revealed today (Tuesday 5th April) and is packed full of visual art, design, craft, performances and degree shows at venues across the city.

This is the largest Ignite Dundee programme to date and includes a new strand of events titled “Ignite Sparks”. A programme of specially curated activity selected to celebrate Scotland’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design.

Art and design work from emerging artists and designers from Abertay University and DJCAD will be on display during the degree shows plus end of year exhibitions from Dundee and Angus College students at the Gardyne and Arbroath campuses.

DCA will present the largest exhibition to date by Duncan Marquiss, recipient of the 2015 Margaret Tait award and DJCAD graduate.

The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum continues its major exhibition Draw The Line: Old Masters to The Beano showcasing Dundee’s nationally significant Fine Art collection.

City Square will host two vibrant Pop Up Dundee markets, showcasing products from established and young designers plus a whole host of food from some of the cities most loved restaurants.

Pop-up Dundee

Pop-up Dundee

Dundee Rep and V&A Dundee combine forces to present an evening of theatre design with multi-award winning set, costume and video designers Bunny Christie and Finn Ross chaired by Joyce McMillan.

The last weekend of May sees the inaugural Dundee Design Festival hit the city with four days of design events, workshops, demonstrations and exhibitions.

Ignite Sparks is a new initiative for 2016 celebrating innovation and the use of technology in new and exciting ways.  Ignite Festival will host ten Ignite Sparks events including music, poetry, visual arts, dance, architecture, craft, theatre and storytelling.

Festival highlights:

Remembering Witch’s Blood 27th May at West Ward

Witch's Blood

An immersive soundscape of voices past and present will underpin this promenade event in a dramatic industrial environment; recalling memories of those who took part in the original 1987 Witch’s Blood production. The haunting soundscape, a symphony of singing voices, spoken words and fragments of narrative both hint towards a bigger story to come and provide scope to hear recorded audio of Michael Marra singing from the original show and his daughter, Alice, singing live. An event to celebrate Dundee’s desperate past, optimistic present and exciting future.

The People’s Tower: The Royal Arch; Saturday 28th May at Slessor Gardens

The People’s Tower Dundee’s Royal Arch

On a Saturday in May hundreds of people will take part in a giant participatory, temporary public art project to recreate Dundee’s Royal Arch out of cardboard boxes! Working with international artist Olivier Grossetete, members of the public will work together to rebuild the massive arch close to its original site celebrating design and construction!

A series of events thinking about the built heritage here in Dundee – what buildings are gone and what new buildings are emerging will take place alongside evening projections before the tower is toppled and trampled the following day!

Motion Capture; 24th May, 8pm at Hannah Maclure Centre

Motion Capture. Photo by Scott Carroll

Motion Capture. Photo by Scott Carroll

Run by dance artist Gemma Connell, The Artifact is a vehicle for pursuing collaborations between dance and other art forms. Suk-Jun Kim is a Korean composer and sound artist, based in Aberdeen. He is a lecturer in Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art and Programme Coordinator of MMus in Sonic Arts at the University of Aberdeen. In 2014, he co-founded and is the Director of sonADA (Sound Arts Days in Aberdeen), an experimental music festival in Aberdeen, UK.

Motion Capture sees two currently unrelated areas of art; music making through live coding and improvised dance, come together in an experiment live on stage. Electroacoustic musician and live coder Suk-Jun Kim will create music through a computer, whilst two dance artists improvise movement in response. The dancers and the musicians have never met, and know nothing of each other’s work, but must create a coherent piece of performance in the moment.

Abertay Digital Graduate Show

Abertay Digital Graduate Show

Ignite: Dundee’s Festival of Creativity, is a festival run by partners; Abertay University, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee & Angus College, Dundee City Council One City Many Discoveries, Dundee Rep Theatre, Leisure & Culture Dundee, University of Dundee and V&A Dundee.

Ignite: Dundee’s Festival of Creativity has received support as part of the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016, an initiative delivered by VisitScotland. That means that Ignite will be bigger and better than ever with a much expanded programme of partner events and a new element of specially curated activity just for the festival – Ignite Sparks.

To find out more about the festival and browse the full programme visit:
www.ignitednd.co.uk
Facebook: Ignite Dundee
Twitter: @ignitedundee

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