Dundee is set to bid to become UK City of Culture in 2017. In the first of a three-part Courier investigation, Graeme Ogston explores how the city’s cultural landscape has changed in the past two decades.
Once an easy target for cheap stand-up humour, Dundee is now a cultural hotspot with an enviable wealth of talent, ambition and confidence.
That is the view of Stewart Murdoch, the city’s leisure and communities director and a key figure in the forthcoming bidding process for UK City of Culture status.
It is an opinion shared across the city, from grassroots artists to the heads of major cultural players, including Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) and the McManus.
In the first part of our special series in Tuesday’s Courier, Mr Murdoch says the city has taken a long journey to reach its current position as a cultural leader.
He says: “A decision was taken in 1995 to really change the city’s image, because it was perceived as a place that, culturally, wasn’t on the radar. You would bypass it and either go to Aberdeen or the Edinburgh/Glasgow axis.”For more, see Tuesday’s Courier
