Rare footage of university life in Dundee at the end of the last century is being made public after it was plucked from the history books and preserved for generations to come.
The material dating back to the 1980s and 1990s was found by Abertay University archivist Ruaraidh Wishart and will now be shown on the big screen to celebrate the institution’s 25th birthday.
The footage has been digitised after being uncovered during an exploration of the university’s vast archives of student records, syllabuses, meeting papers and rolls of film.
The movie includes scenes from Abertay’s predecessor Dundee Institute of Technology, featuring a world of mainframe computers, punched card systems and the first student nurses completing their science qualifications.
It finishes off with an extract from the dedication service of Abertay University at Dundee Parish Church in 1994 with Tayside Regional Council blue buses and the former Overgate providing a nostalgic backdrop.
Abertay has its roots in the Dundee Technical Institute, which was founded in 1888, and only became a university on August 17 1994.
Mr Wishart said the videos dated from the period of around 1992 to 1994 when the then Dundee Institute of Technology was trying to recruit enough students to gain university status.
A snappy TV commercial gave the institution a new image as a vibrant, modern and enjoyable place to get the qualifications needed for life, summed up in its branded slogan ‘You Can Do It At DIT’.
Mr Wishart said the screening would give film-goers a chance to go down memory lane and look at the facilities of DIT and the wider city of Dundee in promotional materials from a quarter of a century ago.
Alongside the old public transport and cinemas of Dundee, it will take the audience behind the doors of the DIT reception area in the Kydd Building to the media unit with its TV studio and then state-of-the-art computer centre complete with reel-to-reel tape computer mainframes and PCs with floppy disk drives.
“The disco in the student union is a particularly enjoyable scene,” he added.
The university’s dedication service at St Mary’s Church in 1994 provides a fitting springboard to the next chapter, said Mr Wishart.
“The title recognised the high quality of education the institution already provided when it was Dundee Institute of Technology,” he said.
“The service, showing the university in all its academic finery, demonstrated to the world that it was on a level with other academic institutions holding university title.”
Screenings will take place at 12.15 and 1.15pm on November 14 at the Steps Theatre in the Dundee Central Library.
