Pecha Kucha Night Dundee Vol. 23 happened on Monday 25 February 2019 on the main stage of Dundee Rep Theatre, hosted by Creative Dundee, who have hosted PKNs in the city since 2011, which now run in over 1,000 cities around the world!

It’s a simple quick-fire format – speakers show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. Each person chooses their own topic – their work, their loves, hates, hobbies or holidays! The night is a great way for people to meet and hear about interesting activities happening locally across the city and beyond.

Always different, entertaining and inspiring; there is something for everyone at this event night which first started in Tokyo in 2003 and has now grown into a global phenomenon. Our regular ‘spread the word’ feature on the night gives anyone the chance to grab the mic and shout out the events and opportunities they have coming up.

Creative Dundee is an organisation which supports creative talent to base, grow and sustain their practice in and around Dundee, by connecting and amplifying the city’s creativity.

A huge thanks to Laura Darling for the incredible PKN artwork. Check out her website for more.

View the photos from the night thanks to Erika Stevenson, over on Flickr here.

*All talks at this event were BSL interpreted by Jennifer Ramsay and Leigh Anderson, videos below.

Speakers included:

Finlay Wilson is the director of Heart Space Yoga & Bodyworks, a yoga charity that does outreach work throughout Dundee. He also manages a busy social media following with content creation for the BBC and is best known for the creation of Kilted Yoga which has seen him teaching all over the world, with multiple TV appearances and speaking events which always bring him back to Dundee. @scottishyogaboy and @finlay0901

Alison Urie has led the development of the Glasgow based community and creative arts organisation Vox Liminis. Vox Liminis is creating spaces where differently situated people affected by the criminal justice system communicate, connect and grow in new ways, experimenting with the role of the arts in how justice might be reimagined. Prior to this Alison led the first 10 years of youth community organisation Hot Chocolate Trust, building creative community development work in Dundee. @alisonurie and facebook.com/voxliminis

Russell Pepper is the founder of Open/Close Dundee, a street art project which aims to inject colour into the streets of Dundee whilst supporting local artists and encouraging people to explore the hidden parts of Dundee. There are trails of painted doors in the city centre and Stobswell, as well as a collection of painted euro bins along Perth Road, and plans afoot for larger-scale murals across the city. His ultimate aim is to create a city-wide trail to connect communities with the each other, the city centre and the cultural attractions of Dundee. @openclosedundee and facebook.com/openclosedundee

Kelly Kanayama is a comics and pop culture critic, scholar and journalist. She has written for Nerdist, Bitch, The Independent, Sequart, and the Eisner Award-nominated site Women Write About Comics, among others. She has also been published in the critical anthology Working-Class Comic Book Heroes and is working on a book about the comics of author Garth Ennis. @KellyKanayama

Manuela de Los Rios is a marine scientist and environmental communicator. She works with communities and organisations to bring about positive changes to our lives and natural environment. Nothing gives her more of a thrill than swimming in the dark, snorkelling, seaweed and sea gazing. For some people, being by the sea brings them inner peace and health benefits. For others, their livelihoods depend on it. But how much do we really know about what happens beneath the waves? How can marine research be more successful in protecting Scotland’s amazing seas? @manuela_de_rios

Dr Katy Emslie-Smith FRCGP has worked for thirty years in inner city Dundee general practice. She has always had an interest in the provision of primary care in developing countries, having worked in rural Kenya when her family were young. Recent travels have taken her to Peru with the Scottish charity, the Vine Trust, where she learnt that anything is possible. She is recently retired and enjoys not setting the alarm.

Kirsty Maguire is an award winning architect based here in Dundee, designing high performance, low energy, eco buildings locally, nationally and worldwide. But recently she has been on an adventure – spending months sailing towards the ends of the earth, dodging polar bears, icebergs, spotting penguins, sea elephants and whales and getting a glimpse of the history of the (Dundonian) explorers, sealers and whalers. All from a small, wind powered boat. Join part of the adventure from the comfort of your chair. @PassivhausArch, kirsty_maguire_architect and tales_of_the_isbjorn.

Stewart Heaton and Louise Murphy of DD Tours run city walking tours in Dundee. They started in 2016 with Dark Dundee tours, exploring the dark side of our city’s history. Since then they have told their stories to over 10,000 people from all over the world and ran more than 15 different tours including taking over Verdant Works, Claypotts Castle and Discovery at Halloween. They now also run Discover Dundee tours which looks at more of the highlights, instead of the lowlights, of history and you’ll usually find them either underground in the Vaults, at the top of the Old Steeple or locked in a creepy old cemetery at night. The funny and entertaining way the tours are presented as a double act has helped them become #1 of 12 tours in Dundee on Trip Advisor. @Dundee_Tours

Kate Treharne used to be a scientist, but she’s all right now… She’s a keen, not to say evangelical gardener and proponent of green stuff for Good.  In her work life, she sets up and supports community gardens across Dundee. In her spare time, she basically does the same thing but with the happy addition of chickens and various children.

Majsko Sekula is a non-binary artist and a 2nd-year undergraduate Computer Arts student at Abertay University. They moved to Dundee from Poland 2 years ago and started immersing themselves in the cultural world hidden in this city. In spare time, they create visual stories, play games and explore the topics of gender roles and gender identification in our society based on their personal experience. They also love to gather inspiration from movies, books and music, smile at dogs they pass on the sidewalk and struggle to fit all the plants they have in their tiny flat. @thymedog

Andrew Batchelor is the founder of Dundee Culture and is Dundee’s youngest ambassador. Named by Digital Leaders as one of the top young digital leaders in the United Kingdom. Despite battling various disabilities, from cerebral palsy to autism, that has not stopped Andrew from doing what he loves – promoting his home city to the world! @andybfaedundee / @DundeeCulture and facebook.com/dundeeculture

Elaine Omand has a strong passion for both Dundee and fitness. She has been running with Dundee Roadrunners for 10 years. In 2012, she instigated Camperdown parkrun, a sociable weekly 5km run, and started junior parkrun in 2017. She is also a parkrun ambassador, helping to assist new event teams. Elaine has used running as an excuse to travel, having been to the the Alps, the US, and New Zealand for races, and loves the way sport opens doors and brings people together. Elaine is a running coach in Dundee, and since 2016 she has been leading sightseeing tours of Dundee on the run, combining her passion for fitness with showcasing the city. When not out exploring, Elaine is a dentist, enjoys cooking and the theatre. @ElaineOmand

Avril Smart is a Dundee-based master of none, who can’t seem to stick to one passion. With few credentials to her name and a penchant for the ridiculous, Avril does pretty much everything she can to pay the bills. Last year, she bought a saw… @scottishsawstress

Optional research questions on PKN booking form:

During our last PKN, we asked attendees to identify the biggest inequalities they see on a day to day basis – Socio-economic Disadvantage, Gender, Age and Sexual Orientation came out as top concerns. In order for us to better understand these issues, we’d love you to answer these optional questions below. The information you provide will be kept entirely confidential and will never be traced back to you as an individual. The information you provide will be used for statistical and research purposes only and will be stored securely. Thanks.

PECHA KUCHA NIGHT DUNDEE VOL 23

Date: Monday 25 February 2019

Time: 7 – 10pm (event will kick off at 7.20pm)

Place: Dundee Rep, Tay Square, Dundee, DD1 1PB

#PKN_DND

Tickets

Standard: £7

Amps supporters, students, un-waged, over 60s and under 18s: £5

Find out more about our Amps Supporters Network for discount ticket entry. 

For this event, bookings can only be made by credit/debit cards, and refunds will be made only if the order is cancelled up to 24 hrs in advance of the event, not after. If you have any problems booking a ticket, please contact news@creativedundee.com

Thanks to a generous contribution from someone in the Amps community, we will be able to provide free transport for anyone in Dundee whose disability impedes or makes it harder to attend this event. If that’s you, book a ticket and email us at news@creativedundee.com and we’ll organise an accessible taxi to take you to the event and back!

*This event will be BSL interpreted by Jennifer Ramsay and Leigh Anderson. Shoot us an email at news@creativedundee.com if you’d like to be seated in a specific section to see this better.

*This event will be live-streamed, filmed, photographed and eventually shared on the Creative Dundee social media platforms. If you do not wish to appear in any of the images that are made public, please let us know at news@creativedundee.com

Pecha Kucha Night Dundee is part of the global PKN network and was devised and shared by Klein Dytham architecture in 2003. PKN Dundee is now the largest of the nights in the UK, and is organised and hosted by Creative Dundee.