How does the V&A help Dundee’s high streets?

Edinburgh has a historic castle and Inverness has the mysticism of Loch Ness… but what brings people to the City of Discovery?

We have been tracking the health of Dundee’s high streets since June 2023, prompting questions over what it needs to thrive.

The council’s 2050 strategic investment plan highlights the ability of big attractions like the V&A to pull “significant numbers of people into the city”.

But is the design museum’s presence enough to give a boost to Dundee high streets?

Is the V&A Dundee’s recipe for success?

The V&A officially opened in September 2018 and saw 1.7million visits in its first five years. 

But how does that reflect the city itself?

In its very first full year of running, the museum shot to the top of the most popular visitor attractions in Dundee and Angus.

In fact, it was over seven times more popular than the second attraction on the list, Discovery Point.

However, 2020 had something different in store (as we all know).

Figures from Moffat Centre’s visitor attraction monitor show Dundee has not yet bounced back to 2019 levels after the pandemic.

While six attractions, including the V&A, saw 833,825 visits in 2019, the same locations only tallied up 509,560 visits last year.

In 2020, with attractions unable to open for large parts of the year due to lockdowns, visits to these Dundee spots dropped to 193,184.

But other areas, like Angus, bounced back in visitor attraction figures.

The thirteen tracked hotspots in the local authority surpassed their 2018 and 2019 visit numbers last year

So what role does the V&A play in that?

The V&A Dundee over the years

To mark its five year anniversary of opening, the V&A produced an impact report looking into some facts and figures on how the museum has performed with visitors since opening.

Between September 2018 and September 2023, it hosted eight major exhibitions, 23 free exhibitions and 400 public events.

At the moment, it is showcasing the Dundee tapestry which has been popular among visitors and features 35 hand-stitched panels showcasing the city, made by 140 volunteer stitchers from the area.

The report states that as a result of opening, £304m has been brought to the Scottish economy, and £109m to Dundee itself.

Visits to the museum peaked in 2019, following its opening in September 2018.

Covid-19 saw the museum open only a third of what it would usually have been in 2020, resulting in a knock to figures, which would have continued into 2021 as restrictions made travelling more difficult.

Since then, numbers have been slowly picking back up, but are only at around half of what they were in 2019.

More than 480,000 people who have attended the V&A since it opened have been said to have visited Dundee for the first time.

The majority of these attended between September 2018 and September 2019, which matches with the peak in visitor numbers at this time.

However, according to the data from the V&A’s impact study, a further 105,000 people made their first trip to Dundee between April 2022 and March 2023, followed by a further 82,000 forecast between April 2023 and September 2023.

The above chart shows the locations of the visitors to the V&A within its first five years.

Almost 40% of people who attended were from the “rest of Scotland” which includes any part of Scotland outside Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross and Fife.

A further 16% were from outside Scotland, and 9% travelled to the city from overseas.

These figures show that people are continuing to visit Dundee as a tourist destination.

Leonie Bell, director of V&A Dundee, said: “We are really proud to be part of this remarkable city, whether it’s bringing visitors to Dundee for the first time in huge numbers or celebrating local history with the projects like the Dundee Tapestry. The waterfront has transformed in recent years, reconnecting the city with the River Tay and creating new indoor and outdoor public spaces for everyone.

“We’re delighted that we’ve welcomed 1.9 million visitors to V&A Dundee since opening, and that 500,000 people have come to the city for the first time as part of trips to the museum, providing an economic boost and an opportunity for new people to discover more of Dundee.

“We’re excited that our work, in partnership with our founding partners and many other organisations across the city, is paving the way for Eden Project Dundee and other transformational opportunities that can continue to drive Dundee forward.”

She added: “But V&A Dundee is more than just the number of visitors, it’s also about the experience that they have in V&A Dundee and in the city.

“A lot of our work takes place behind the scenes. We know that our local impact with schools and small community groups is incredibly powerful, whether that’s welcoming every Dundee school in for free last year, or sharing our spaces with Alzheimer Scotland to run free dementia cafes, or for young parents to be trained in design and textile skills, and of course as an employer in the city creating opportunities and developing the skills of many.”

Boosting visitors and boosting profit?

While the V&A visitors have not returned to 2019 levels, visitors to the city itself have exceeded past figures.

Dundee saw 2.6 million visitors in 2022 compared to 2.3 million in 2019, according to figures from the Scottish Tourism Economic Activity Monitor (STEAM) report.

The figures were steadily rising since 2015 but rose by over 200,000 year-on-year in 2018 – the year the V&A opened.

So there were more feet on the streets, from visitors at least, but there may be more to success than a single big attraction.

A council retail report published last summer highlighted the creation of the V&A as one of the factors that “augur well for the City Centre and for retail and leisure activity”.

But it also lists sports, cultural and business events, the Eden Project and other Waterfront investments.

Radio 1’s Big Weekend held last May, for example, brought 33,652 unique visitors to the city from a total audience of 81,835, a report showed.

That made it the biggest event of its kind ever to be held in Dundee.

Visitors also spent an estimated £1.8m over the course of the weekend outside of the event space.

A total of 25,078 Dundee residents attended and spent an estimated £800,000 outside of the event.

The chart below shows the average daily spend of the visitors based on a survey of over 3000 people.

Attendees spent more at the festival but they did also contribute to businesses on the city’s streets.

Dundee Matters

The Courier has recently launched an initiative aimed at finding solutions for the city centre’s problems – Dundee Matters.

Our first priority for the initiative is the city’s high streets.

We have surveyed hundreds of Dundee shoppers to help guide our summit on the topic that we are set to host this May.