A year buoyed by collective action, experimentation and togetherness – here’s our annual reflection on all that 2024 held.
It’s fair to say that it’s been an unsettled year. Across the local and national cultural landscape, 2024 has been shaped by precarity in the sector, for freelancers, organisations and beyond. Running alongside broader global pressures and crises, it is understandable that anyone would wave goodbye to 2024 with a sense of ‘good riddance’.
However, as always, it is never so clear-cut. While recognising the hardships, we always aim to find space for the positive and this year is no different – 2024 has also brought with it great opportunities for growth, togetherness, and much-needed joy.
As we look back over the year as a team and reflect on what it has meant for Creative Dundee, we’re carried into 2025 by the continued resilience and tenacity of Dundee’s creative community. We’re inspired by the activism and commitment of the grassroots projects and organisations that surround us, the unending passion and enthusiasm of our network, and the collective voice of the city that demands to be heard and fights for better, together.
Fostering What’s Here
A central focus of Creative Dundee is always in supporting and nurturing the incredible work that is happening across the city – building on the connections and actions that already exist here and showcasing what makes it so special.
As part of Dundee’s Changemakers Hub, this year we led Press Change – a 10-day pilot youth community journalism project supporting a small cohort of young people to develop their skills and agency in raising their voices for social and climate justice in Dundee. It was a joy to witness their confidence and creativity flourish under the guidance of established creative practitioners – with each participant’s project beautifully amplifying their unique perspectives alongside stories of the city.
Our Amps Network gathered in spring for our Forum, where we hosted our annual Community Ideas Fund. The £2,500 fund, enabled by the subscriptions of our brilliant network, is designed to bring to life an exciting new collaboration between Amps supporters that will result in a positive social impact in Dundee. The network chose to award the fund to Dundee Radio Club, who are working to pilot a new community radio station, and we look forward to seeing what new voices they bring to the airwaves next year.
To pass the mic to creative workers across the city, we shared Creative Base – a new digital feature spotlighting the broad range of creative practitioners whose work builds the collaborative communities that make Dundee special. We enjoyed chatting with eight local artists, designers and makers about what they do and what it means for them to be working in the city, asking what could be improved to ensure a brighter future and sharing the spirit of collective working with shout-outs for other Dundee-based creatives they admire or are inspired by.
This year we opened Hapworks_00, building on a huge amount of work from our team and conversations with more than 390 creative practitioners, businesses, grassroots organisations, and existing creative spaces. This temporary coworking and event space gave us room to experiment – trialing coworking, hosting our own events, and opening the space to others by handing over the keys to three local groups for our first Hapworks Takeovers.
These takeovers enabled us to provide short-term space to test experimental creative projects and share work with audiences in a visible city centre location, highlighting the limited space in the city for trying something new. Each project brought new people into the space and transformed it in their own unique ways, inviting anyone to participate in music, games and print with groups who are embedded in Dundee’s cultural scene.
Often running concurrent with issues of space in the city, we spent time exploring freelancers’ experiences of working in Dundee and the broader cultural sector. At our event Working Together Better, we aimed to centre the perspectives of freelancers, asking how those who work with them can do so fairly and with care. We found this event hugely influential on our thinking for the year, further exploring these issues with our Amps network, which resulted in valuable feedback and data that we’ll carry forward into our work.
In November, we took part in the Dundee Culture Summit and launch of the 2024–2034 Culture Strategy alongside many others from across the city and beyond. The day was a hugely valuable opportunity to share and connect with Dundee’s wider cultural network, making space for important conversations and to strengthen solidarity between organisations, the city’s freelancers and those who support and take part in culture. Now the work begins on putting the strategy into action.
Facilitating Togetherness
One of our overarching highlights for the year has been working as a team to enable space for people to come together from across our network, surrounding communities, and partners.
Both off and online, our Amps community came together throughout the year and continued to act as a notable bright-spot in our busy programme. We gathered for Amps Meet-ups in summer and autumn, grappled with big ideas with the Service Design Academy, and went behind the scenes with our friends at DCA. On Tuesday mornings, we enjoyed sharing and learning together at our digital Amps Breakfasts, hearing from a variety of folks in the network and getting privileged access to their creative journeys, spaces, and inspirations.
Through Hapworks_00 we gained a home for our events and particularly enjoyed changing up our working week, using our Summer Coworking Days to visit nearby creative spaces and explore the varied homes for creativity that make our city special. As part of the broader Hapworks project, we also continued meeting and working with partners across Dundee to investigate options for what comes next, and are excited to continue this work in the new year, building a sustainable, long-term vision for creative space in the city.
In November, we returned to Dundee Rep Theatre for another sold out PechaKucha Night Dundee! Vol.31 didn’t disappoint and we were joined by an incredible lineup of speakers exploring everything from geology and the passage of time, to the joys of fantasy football and a baby named Shart. Always one of our favourite nights of the year, PechaKucha is a restorative moment for our team and a timely reminder of the vibrant, inspiring and joyful community that supports us.
Through Dundee Changemakers Hub this community has grown further, and we’ve been thrilled by the response to the Hub’s work so far. Early in the year, we joined the rest of the Changemakers at Not Another Visioning Event, bringing together unique perspectives from across Dundee in both the people and projects represented in the room. The energy, ideas and enthusiasm shared created such optimism for what we can achieve together, and the potential impact of a collective voice rang clear.
Although we’re only one session into this informal peer-learning programme, we’ve delighted in rounding out the year by bringing back Fabric for its fourth iteration, supported by Dundee Changemakers Hub. With a playful and imaginative first meeting already enjoyed by a new group of community organisers and creative practitioners, we can’t wait to continue the journey together next year.
Joining the Dots
At the end of 2023, CULTIVATE – our three-year pilot project which brought together artists and communities to explore climate justice in practical and meaningful ways – wrapped up and gave us the chance to reflect on what we’d learnt from the project and its impact. In June, we were delighted to share Ripple Effects: Reflections and Learning from CULTIVATE, a collaborative report with learning partner tialt, exploring key learnings from the project and insights into six of the commissions, focusing on the artists and communities who undertook them.
CULTIVATE has been a significant catalyst project for Creative Dundee and a huge part of our team’s work for the past few years. Ripple Effects helped us solidify this experience, emphasising the vital role of artists and creative practitioners in shaping a better future, and the valuable learning we’ll be carrying forward into future advocacy.
Inspired by the report and to share this learning further, in September we hosted Rooting Creativity in Social & Climate Justice. This celebratory event aimed to spotlight other local projects which have embraced creativity to engage communities in future thinking and making. Joined by a panel of creative practitioners, we enjoyed an evening of discussion and explored the processes and essential conditions that make good practice possible.
Beyond Dundee, we were thrilled to lead Creative Scotland’s Create:Networks fund, supporting emerging and established local creative networks as enablers for sustainable creative communities across Scotland. Launched in June, the £120,000 fund received a huge amount of interest (with a total ask 90% beyond the funding available) and became a formative part of our year.
We relished the opportunity to deliver and design a fund like this and it has provided vast opportunities for learning – considering the impact of meaningful communication, care, and time on the process participants and our small team. We look forward to seeing the outcomes of the nine recipients’ work and connecting further with the new networks across Scotland!
Early in the year, we waved the flag for Dundee at Creative Scotland’s Parliamentary Reception, showcasing our work and shouting some more about how vital creative communities are for collective good. The event was a celebration of the reach and impact of culture and creativity across Scotland, highlighting the importance of public funding for the arts and creative industries, and the groups, organisations and individuals who make it all happen. We enjoyed the opportunity to meet and hear from others across the country and it is not lost on us how fitting this February event would become to the tone and messaging of the rest of our year.
Unsurprisingly, much of our year was dominated by funding. Across national calls to action, city budget cuts, and tackling our own Multi-Year Funding application, it’s been a huge amount of work for our small team.
The outcome of Multi-Year Funding will undoubtedly shape our 2025 and the announcement in January is where our team’s focus remains as we head into the new year. While we hope to move away from the uncertainty and shared frustrations that have overshadowed this year, it is hard to deny the overwhelming impact that Multi-Year Funding decisions will have not only on Dundee but the sector as a whole.
The recent news of Creative Scotland’s funding uplift in the Scottish Government Budget is a positive sign and a wonderful signifier of what is possible when we come together to make the irrefutable value of culture and creativity known – but alone it is not enough to sustain the sector and redevelop catastrophically underfunded organisations, unsupported creative practitioners and underserved communities.
Continuing our work within this environment, we turn our attention to what Creative Dundee can offer to those we support. We will continue to platform and advocate for underrepresented voices in the city and wider sector, providing space to share Dundee’s unique perspective and vibrant culture. We will develop our learning and improve our work in equalities, accessibility, and wellbeing to strengthen our team and share this learning more broadly to organisations and creative practitioners, helping us to support each other.
We will hold space for creative freelancers to share, connect and learn, hoping to address the isolation and exploitation that featured heavily in our teams conversations with our network this year. And we will lead by example, asking better of those that hold power in our city and recognising our privilege as an organisation to access the rooms and conversations that shift the path of Dundee’s future.
As we sign off for the year, we encourage you to continue to show support for culture and creativity through advocacy and making your voices heard. It works, it matters and even small actions can make a huge difference. If you’re unsure where to start, Dundee’s much-loved cultural organisations need your support now and we’ve shared a blog with suggested further actions you can take.
And, of course, accompanying the importance of continuing the work is the vital need to make time for rest and reflection. We hope you can close out the year with time to pause and share in joy with those who are important to you. Our team will be taking a well-deserved break over the festive period and until we see you again in 2025 – thank you for all your continued support.
