Oxford University student Hannah Walton shares a snapshot of her summer with Creative Dundee, researching the city’s creative communities and spaces for her undergraduate dissertation.

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I spent a month in the Summer of 2025 with Creative Dundee, researching Dundee as a “creative city” for my university dissertation. My time in Dundee involved lots of spaces around the city into which I was welcomed by many of you, and enjoyed photographing.

I like film photography because I find I think carefully about what I photograph, rather than taking and deleting loads of photos like I would on my phone. It captures places in the way I was feeling at the time, because so much of what I am thinking goes into the photographs.

So, here is a “thought gallery” of my time in Dundee, through film photographs.

This photo was actually taken in the winter, not summer, on the way to get my film developed. I needed to finish off the roll of film, and my family (Mum, Dad and Brother) were accidental models. My Dad got me into film photography originally, and my Olympus Zoom is handed down from him.

My Mum is my connection to Dundee – she grew up here, and her mum still lives in Dundee. I chose to base my dissertation in Dundee inspired by our visits to my Nanny’s, noticing how the city had changed each time, and finding so many questions I wanted to explore.

Over the course of visits to my grandparents as a kid, Dundee’s waterfront was redeveloped, the V&A arrived, and the UNESCO designation awarded. These changes, I thought, must mean Dundee is becoming a creative place. Later, during my uni geography course, I started to question what made a city creative, and what exists outside of redevelopments, awards, and branding. This led me to Creative Dundee, and my research into Dundee as a “creative city”.

My time with Creative Dundee was based in their office at the DCA, and across interview locations throughout the city. They encouraged me to explore Dundee; I think this photo was taken on a walk with Gillian through the West End. I used their 99 Things Guide as a sort of atlas, and attended its many spaces, exhibitions, and events.

Space, pictured here as Creative Dundee’s former Hapworks space, became a big theme of my research. Affordable, collaborative, accessible, and permanent space was the most common response when I asked participants what they wanted for the future creative city.

I like how you can just about see me at the centre of this image, reflected in the window on Castle Street. It makes me wonder how we might see ourselves reflected in more spaces, to enact our visions for future creative space. The future and how we imagine it became a central theme of my dissertation, which asks how we can enable creative imaginations for the future creative city.

The larger spaces of Dundee’s creative city, like the McManus, V&A, and DCA, were important to understand Dundee’s creative ecosystem. This city-wide view helped me map out the inequalities produced by Creative City policies, in which smaller creative organisations are inadequately valued, and funded.

However, it also revealed similarities too, as big and small organisations alike told me how they struggle under austerity and the undervaluing of creativity. Realising these similarities, and remembering the differences, could help us collectively advocate for our creative cities.

Creative Dundee encouraged me to look to the grassroots creative city, and helped me reach out to creatives across the city in diverse organisations including Art Angel, ScarpAntics and Generator Projects.

Although I didn’t get to speak to the organisers of the Perth Road Community Fridge, Transition Dundee, it is one such example of a grassroots creative space in the city, framed in this image by summery hues which feel very long ago today!

The many grassroots organisations I spoke to were so welcoming and generous with their time and knowledge, and their stories kept me inspired through the long days writing up my report. Thank you to Dundee’s true creative city!

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If you’d like to learn more about my research, I have created a zine with Creative Dundee which mirrors the form of my research diary to help summarise my dissertation.

Swipe through to read. You can download and print your own version of the zine (or download a text-only version), and I would love to read your responses to the prompts throughout! If you’d like to read all 12,000 words of my dissertation you can access this here too.

Here are two resources I use in my dissertation and recommend if you’d like to read more about creativity, cities, and the Creative City policy: 

• Creative City Limits – this summarises the discussions of a research network from 2012 with some interesting provocations like “make creative cities more ordinary and uncool”.
• Against Creativity by Oli Mould (2018) focuses on capitalist co-options of creativity, and their alternatives.  

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Hannah is a final year geography student at Oxford University with interests in creativity, cities, and people. She also enjoys photography, jewellery making, and fibre arts, and incorporates these into her degree wherever she can. She spent a month with Creative Dundee in July 2025 to research for her undergraduate dissertation.