WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.940 Hello, good afternoon. My name is Christy Anthony. I'm currently the Creative Director of the Adelaide 2 00:00:05.940 --> 00:00:10.820 College of the Arts, the TAFE building, and previously at the Adelaide Fringe. I'd like to 3 00:00:10.820 --> 00:00:17.500 welcome you here today as your chair and acknowledge that today we are gathered on the traditional 4 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:21.820 lands of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and that we recognise and respect their cultural 5 00:00:21.820 --> 00:00:27.420 heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We acknowledge that they are of continuing 6 00:00:27.420 --> 00:00:32.100 importance to the Kaurna people living today and we respect their elders past and present. 7 00:00:33.140 --> 00:00:37.220 I would like to also give you a little bit of housekeeping before we start, please. 8 00:00:37.400 --> 00:00:45.080 That is to switch your mobile phone to silent. This is the new off so that you may tweet during 9 00:00:45.080 --> 00:00:56.100 the presentation if you so wish. And tweet at tag is at idea Adelaide, ideas Adelaide, that's I-D-E-A-S-A-D-E-L-A-I-D-E. 10 00:00:56.380 --> 00:00:57.400 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 11 00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:11.800 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 12 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:41.300 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 13 00:01:41.300 --> 00:01:46.540 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 14 00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:52.120 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 15 00:01:52.500 --> 00:01:59.620 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 16 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:00.820 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 17 00:02:00.820 --> 00:02:02.580 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 18 00:02:02.580 --> 00:02:04.720 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 19 00:02:05.940 --> 00:02:11.120 And a hashtag is at the Adelaide College of the Arts. 20 00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:16.320 Contemporary Art, Scotland's leading centre for contemporary art and film, the project manager 21 00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:20.860 for the Scottish Playwrights Studio Development Project, director of the Edinburgh International 22 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:25.660 Book Festival and marketing manager for the Edinburgh Fringe. She's also the visiting 23 00:02:25.660 --> 00:02:30.940 professor at the Edinburgh and Napier University. Faith and I have personally known each other for 24 00:02:30.940 --> 00:02:36.340 over 20 years as I got my backpack and headed off to Edinburgh and our worlds collided then. 25 00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:42.100 Then she is a wonderful godmother to my daughter Edie in Adelaide and therefore very familiar with 26 00:02:42.100 --> 00:02:48.300 this city as well, which will enlighten her conversation with us. Faith's spirit is vast 27 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:52.240 and her influence enormous and her commitment to creating a better, more integrated world is 28 00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:57.540 absolutely unswervable. She's, in my opinion, a real international treasure and I hope you'll 29 00:02:57.540 --> 00:03:06.180 make her welcome now, please. Thank you, Christy, you're making me blush. Good afternoon everyone, 30 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:13.560 it's a very great pleasure to be at the Festival of Ideas and to be back here in Adelaide and indeed 31 00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:17.700 I hope with Christy's help and with your contributions that this event will be a tale 32 00:03:17.700 --> 00:03:24.400 not just of two cities but of three and an exploration of great cultural phenomena and 33 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:29.400 the roles they fall into, that they forge, that they force sometimes and that they sometimes have 34 00:03:29.400 --> 00:03:35.200 foisted on them in relation to the cities that they inhabit. And the stories also that we all 35 00:03:35.200 --> 00:03:35.860 need to tell. 36 00:03:36.340 --> 00:03:43.780 To learn to articulate and share about them. The story of Adelaide's festivals is a compelling 37 00:03:43.780 --> 00:03:50.700 one as well and with the now annual festival kicking off next year, I think it's going to be 38 00:03:50.700 --> 00:03:56.860 a very interesting time. But first let's trace back the thousands of miles, the journey I've 39 00:03:56.860 --> 00:04:02.460 just taken back to Scotland. And of course the tales I'm going to tell you are personal ones 40 00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:06.160 as well. They're my own stories and interpretations as well as those 41 00:04:06.160 --> 00:04:12.140 of cultural and civic enterprise. So my relationship with Edinburgh and its festivals is a very long 42 00:04:12.140 --> 00:04:17.580 one. I lived in a small town just outside Edinburgh, about 10 miles out. But Edinburgh wasn't 43 00:04:17.580 --> 00:04:22.720 really a regular haunt for me except for kind of big item shopping and of course the festivals in 44 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:27.820 August. My parents started to take me to Edinburgh's festivals from very early on, beginning with 45 00:04:27.820 --> 00:04:34.180 kind of children's shows and then they were teachers to the core through a highly constructed 46 00:04:34.180 --> 00:04:35.860 educational curve. 47 00:04:37.580 --> 00:04:43.520 And I remember the excitement of some of the great productions in that satire of the Three Estates playing as part of 48 00:04:43.520 --> 00:04:49.620 Edinburgh International Festival in the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland. And I also remember guiltily 49 00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:56.740 scurrying past the statue of John Knox, the father of Presbyterianism that stood in the entrance to get in. 50 00:04:56.940 --> 00:05:04.300 And I also remember my first deliciously confused taste of nakedness on stage as my dad accidentally took my 51 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:06.140 sister and I, who were 11 and 10, to the stage. And I remember that I was in the audience and I was 52 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:15.920 thinking, I'm going to be a little bit more of a 53 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:19.040 and I was thinking, I'm going to be a little bit more of a 54 00:05:20.880 --> 00:05:30.900 most of the flesh and all of the action. More later of Edinburgh Festival's role in loosening up the narrow bindings of our Calvinist inheritance. 55 00:05:31.900 --> 00:05:35.740 By 15 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Festival 56 00:05:35.740 --> 00:05:36.140 fringe for the next few years. I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Festival fringe for the next few years. 57 00:05:36.160 --> 00:06:06.120 By 15 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Festival fringe for the next few years. I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Festival fringe for the next few years. 58 00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:18.880 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Festival fringe for the next few years. I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 59 00:06:18.980 --> 00:06:22.080 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 60 00:06:22.080 --> 00:06:26.140 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 61 00:06:26.700 --> 00:06:29.540 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 62 00:06:29.800 --> 00:06:31.160 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 63 00:06:31.160 --> 00:06:33.480 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 64 00:06:33.880 --> 00:06:36.100 I was saving my pocket money and creating my own Edinburgh Federal Fridge for the next few years. 65 00:06:36.100 --> 00:06:39.560 in all the capacities that Christy has described, 66 00:06:39.740 --> 00:06:42.440 producing a fringe venue, running a festival, 67 00:06:42.720 --> 00:06:45.620 running a venue and then running the organisation, 68 00:06:46.100 --> 00:06:47.940 Festivals Edinburgh, that I do now. 69 00:06:48.100 --> 00:06:51.680 And that beauty and history still absolutely resonate with me 70 00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:54.440 and many of my fellow residents and the millions of visitors. 71 00:06:54.880 --> 00:06:58.980 But these inherited givens, including its festivals, 72 00:06:59.300 --> 00:07:02.620 are not enough, as Edinburgh is slowly learning. 73 00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:05.560 The genesis of my relationship with Dundee 74 00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:08.420 was a very different one, with absolutely no givens. 75 00:07:08.420 --> 00:07:11.920 To give you an idea of what Dundee was like in the 80s 76 00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:13.280 when I first encountered it, 77 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:15.940 I need to quote the 2004 quarterly essay 78 00:07:15.940 --> 00:07:18.520 by your fellow countryman, David Maloof. 79 00:07:18.680 --> 00:07:21.760 In his examination of the relationship between Australia 80 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:24.680 and the so-called mother country, Great Britain, 81 00:07:24.860 --> 00:07:27.920 he tried to define and describe the enormous changes 82 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:30.580 that had taken place in Australian culture and society 83 00:07:30.580 --> 00:07:32.020 over the last 50 years. 84 00:07:32.200 --> 00:07:34.760 He did so by describing a visit north 85 00:07:34.760 --> 00:07:35.540 to Dundee, 86 00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:38.340 when he was over in Edinburgh at the book festival. 87 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:42.560 And he conjured up a kind of social and spiritual desolation, 88 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:45.940 the stark emptiness of the streets in the morning, 89 00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:47.940 the absence of people, the bleak architecture. 90 00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:52.160 Dundee, he said, was like Australia in the 50s. 91 00:07:52.180 --> 00:07:54.700 And I got the impression that that was quite bad. 92 00:07:55.720 --> 00:07:57.040 That was his story. 93 00:07:57.240 --> 00:08:00.340 And that's the state I first encountered Dundee in. 94 00:08:00.340 --> 00:08:03.400 I found it grim, closed off, depressed. 95 00:08:03.980 --> 00:08:05.540 As he said, architecturalism, 96 00:08:05.560 --> 00:08:07.020 and socially impoverished. 97 00:08:07.180 --> 00:08:09.720 The friends who I went to see who lived there 98 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:12.100 were working for Dundee Repertory Theatre. 99 00:08:12.380 --> 00:08:13.780 And they were passionate about the people 100 00:08:13.780 --> 00:08:16.720 and the work that they were doing to connect audiences 101 00:08:16.720 --> 00:08:19.920 with their work and build an ambitious and empowering 102 00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:22.200 theatre in education and community programme. 103 00:08:22.660 --> 00:08:25.160 But there was no denying that the erosion of Dundee's 104 00:08:25.160 --> 00:08:28.380 industrial past and the loss of its proud manufacturing history 105 00:08:28.380 --> 00:08:30.100 had crippled its confidence. 106 00:08:30.460 --> 00:08:32.080 What was left of these traditions 107 00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:35.040 and an amazing medieval street pattern 108 00:08:35.040 --> 00:08:35.540 had been destroyed. 109 00:08:35.540 --> 00:08:37.440 It had literally been concreted over. 110 00:08:37.660 --> 00:08:40.080 I just remember it always being dark. 111 00:08:40.540 --> 00:08:42.740 When I returned there in 2002 112 00:08:42.740 --> 00:08:45.160 to become the director of Dundee Contemporary Arts, 113 00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:47.160 the new leading centre for contemporary art 114 00:08:47.160 --> 00:08:48.600 and film in Scotland, 115 00:08:49.320 --> 00:08:52.740 Dundee was in the fragile early stages of a renaissance. 116 00:08:53.140 --> 00:08:56.260 I'd moved there to a house that looked over the river, 117 00:08:56.380 --> 00:08:58.240 the Tay River, to my building. 118 00:08:58.540 --> 00:09:01.040 It was the first cultural building in my care. 119 00:09:01.460 --> 00:09:03.620 And I just wanted to make sure that I could see it 120 00:09:03.620 --> 00:09:04.500 if it went on fire. 121 00:09:04.920 --> 00:09:05.520 I'd moved there to a house that looked over the river, 122 00:09:05.520 --> 00:09:07.240 and I drove over the bridge on my first day, 123 00:09:07.320 --> 00:09:08.640 and I stopped at the toll station. 124 00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:10.040 There was a toll on the bridge then. 125 00:09:10.200 --> 00:09:11.680 I said, hello, how are you? 126 00:09:11.900 --> 00:09:13.280 As the man took my money, 127 00:09:13.500 --> 00:09:16.260 he looked at me with a kind of grim intolerance 128 00:09:16.260 --> 00:09:18.320 and didn't say a single word. 129 00:09:18.880 --> 00:09:22.680 Now, I can be a curmudgeonly, self-tormenting Presbyterian too, 130 00:09:22.920 --> 00:09:25.920 but even at my worst, I can manage a monosyllable. 131 00:09:26.220 --> 00:09:27.060 Oh, I thought. 132 00:09:27.500 --> 00:09:30.660 I'd just come from running the largest book festival in the world. 133 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:33.200 I'd had an audience of 200,000 at that event. 134 00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:35.000 That was more than the whole population, 135 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.540 and I'd managed to move and shift their perceptions 136 00:09:38.540 --> 00:09:39.920 and tastes and habits. 137 00:09:40.140 --> 00:09:42.900 Oh, I thought, I'm going to do something about that. 138 00:09:43.060 --> 00:09:44.460 I'm going to make him talk. 139 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.040 I'm going to make him smile. 140 00:09:46.900 --> 00:09:49.520 I parked my car, and I walked into my new building. 141 00:09:49.640 --> 00:09:52.200 It was light, bold, contemporary, interconnected. 142 00:09:52.700 --> 00:09:54.320 It was full of people and hope. 143 00:09:54.860 --> 00:09:56.720 In the cafe bar, I stopped dead. 144 00:09:56.940 --> 00:09:59.440 I thought I spotted one of Scotland's leading poets, 145 00:09:59.660 --> 00:10:02.400 one of the world's leading poets, sitting at a table. 146 00:10:02.500 --> 00:10:03.520 I did a double take. 147 00:10:03.660 --> 00:10:04.940 It was Don Paterson. 148 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:05.800 I looked again. 149 00:10:05.860 --> 00:10:07.520 He was sitting beside Kathleen Jamie. 150 00:10:07.740 --> 00:10:11.580 I waved at them both as they returned their restrained Dundonian smiles, 151 00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:14.220 and then did a triple and a quadruple take. 152 00:10:14.440 --> 00:10:18.140 There was John Burnside, Douglas Dunn, and yes, Robert Crawford too, 153 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:21.400 in my building, five of Scotland's greatest poets, 154 00:10:21.580 --> 00:10:25.320 and they were shyly proprietorial about the space 155 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:26.720 that was going to be in my care. 156 00:10:26.940 --> 00:10:30.360 Not a literary space as yet, although we brought literature in, 157 00:10:30.460 --> 00:10:34.740 but a home and a landing point for creatives in the city and the surround. 158 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:40.260 It belonged to them, and I, at that moment, felt I began to belong as well. 159 00:10:40.640 --> 00:10:43.640 I'd had my struggles at Edinburgh International Book Festival 160 00:10:43.640 --> 00:10:48.300 in getting the recognition and funding within the City of Edinburgh Council 161 00:10:48.300 --> 00:10:51.940 to support the ambitions that I felt were necessary for it to evolve 162 00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:56.440 and to continue to position itself as the international leader in its field. 163 00:10:56.620 --> 00:11:01.480 I'd got some way after some time with some enlightened colleagues in the City Council, 164 00:11:01.700 --> 00:11:04.680 but felt that Edinburgh was very much sitting on, 165 00:11:04.680 --> 00:11:07.260 on its aesthetic and historical laurels. 166 00:11:07.400 --> 00:11:12.080 And Dundee, well, despite the ambitions that Dundee DCA 167 00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:13.960 and Dundee Contemporary Arts represented, 168 00:11:14.360 --> 00:11:17.960 it seemed to me that Dundee was still wearing a crown of thorns, 169 00:11:17.980 --> 00:11:23.260 that it was a martyred city, still too fondly bound to the narratives of negativity. 170 00:11:23.780 --> 00:11:26.500 I basically wanted to swap the vegetation around. 171 00:11:26.660 --> 00:11:32.640 I wanted to softly swathe Dundee, the self-deprecating Dundee, in laurels, 172 00:11:32.640 --> 00:11:34.660 and I wanted to stick some thorns, 173 00:11:34.680 --> 00:11:38.100 under Edinburgh's smug arse. 174 00:11:38.300 --> 00:11:39.560 Maybe I still do. 175 00:11:40.280 --> 00:11:42.280 But let me get on with my stories. 176 00:11:42.440 --> 00:11:45.940 And first, the story of the creation of Dundee Contemporary Arts, 177 00:11:46.020 --> 00:11:48.520 and what became known as the DCA effect. 178 00:11:49.540 --> 00:11:52.880 Once upon a time, in the early 1990s, 179 00:11:52.880 --> 00:11:56.720 in a struggling, uncertain, and rather despised post-industrial city, 180 00:11:56.820 --> 00:12:02.120 perched on the edge of the North Sea in a half-formed country on the edge of Europe, 181 00:12:02.280 --> 00:12:04.660 the beginnings of a dream were being teased and told, 182 00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:07.120 and teased out by politicians and city council officials. 183 00:12:07.620 --> 00:12:10.380 The vision was for a centre for the visual arts, 184 00:12:10.500 --> 00:12:12.100 driven not by the artistic imperative, 185 00:12:12.540 --> 00:12:14.800 though it defined a gap in provision in the city, 186 00:12:14.940 --> 00:12:19.580 but by a sense of the potential economic benefits such a space would bring to the city. 187 00:12:20.020 --> 00:12:23.220 You heard what David Malouf said about Dundee. 188 00:12:23.340 --> 00:12:26.420 My fellow countrymen were sometimes less polite. 189 00:12:28.160 --> 00:12:33.220 Again, to use that rude word, they basically called it the arse end of Scotland. 190 00:12:33.220 --> 00:12:36.320 Both these interpretations are grossly unfair. 191 00:12:36.580 --> 00:12:38.660 Dundee is a city with spirit and character, 192 00:12:38.840 --> 00:12:43.120 with a potent dry humour and a proud history of radicalism and of women's right. 193 00:12:43.380 --> 00:12:45.760 But there were some grim certainties. 194 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:48.520 It was a city with massive urban deprivation. 195 00:12:48.780 --> 00:12:54.300 95% of the children in the Whitfield area of the city, for example, were living in poverty. 196 00:12:54.580 --> 00:12:58.640 The city had the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the whole of Europe. 197 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:02.020 Individual and civic confidence were pretty low. 198 00:13:02.020 --> 00:13:08.120 The original idea for Dundee was a relatively modest and appropriately modest Dundee enterprise, 199 00:13:08.280 --> 00:13:13.600 involving some new gallery space and it also had to amalgamate some resistant printmaking facilities. 200 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:20.400 And the nature of the visual arts that were going to sit at the centre of this offer were really undefined at this stage. 201 00:13:21.260 --> 00:13:27.340 When it opened five years later in 1999, Dundee Contemporary Arts told a very different story. 202 00:13:27.660 --> 00:13:32.000 It was the largest single Scottish Arts Council capital lottery funded project in Scotland. 203 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:38.220 It was the result of a unique partnership between the City of Dundee, the University of Dundee and DCA Limited, 204 00:13:38.460 --> 00:13:40.840 the charitable company that was set up to run it. 205 00:13:40.960 --> 00:13:46.960 It was an award-winning landmark building with a bold vision for programming that would allow it to compete internationally 206 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:52.020 while connecting with the minds, the hearts and the aspirations of the community that was its home. 207 00:13:52.460 --> 00:13:58.220 In addition to two world-class gallery spaces, the production facilities for artists and the education space, 208 00:13:58.460 --> 00:14:01.980 in the intervening years Dundee had acquired two art house cinema spaces, 209 00:14:01.980 --> 00:14:07.900 a shop and a craft space, the visual arts centre for the University of Dundee and a large Cathy Barr facility. 210 00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:14.520 It had accidentally almost become a combination of facilities that was unique in Europe 211 00:14:14.520 --> 00:14:19.960 in a building that reflected these creative connections and encouraged movement between them. 212 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:26.500 The story of how that happened was really about leadership and luck and a certain kind of infectious boldness 213 00:14:26.500 --> 00:14:30.900 and it's therefore, as always, a story of individuals at a particular time. 214 00:14:30.900 --> 00:14:37.580 There was, as Malcolm Gladwell describes it, a tipping point involving some remarkable and remarkably determined people 215 00:14:37.580 --> 00:14:46.340 who communicated a vision, persuaded partners and funders and beautifully bludgeoned their way through political and cultural barriers. 216 00:14:46.820 --> 00:14:52.080 They did what one classic model of leadership does, they created a vision, they communicated it or told their story 217 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:54.600 and they aligned the resources to make it happen. 218 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:59.000 Those people included the Head of Arts and Leisure at the City Council, 219 00:14:59.240 --> 00:15:00.880 the Head of Visual Arts at the Scottish University of Dundee, 220 00:15:00.900 --> 00:15:03.640 the Head of the Scottish Arts Council who was to become DCA's first Director 221 00:15:03.640 --> 00:15:06.740 no self-interest involved in getting it all set up on his part 222 00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:10.980 and a key local politician and one of the people within economic development. 223 00:15:11.500 --> 00:15:17.080 But leadership and vision also came importantly, and I think it's interesting in a city like Adelaide, from the universities. 224 00:15:17.400 --> 00:15:22.900 In terms of international leadership and international scale and connections, that's where that came from 225 00:15:22.900 --> 00:15:29.580 and their sense of international connection added that element to the whole concept and it continues to do so even now. 226 00:15:30.100 --> 00:15:30.880 The Labour Party was the first party to have a vision. 227 00:15:30.900 --> 00:15:34.400 The Labour Party had a strong hold of power at the City Council, 228 00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:37.440 lottery funding for capital development was plentiful, 229 00:15:37.640 --> 00:15:42.140 the other facilities and the part-time cinema were in need of reinvigoration 230 00:15:42.140 --> 00:15:47.280 and at that stage in the whole of Scotland there was no outstanding space for contemporary art 231 00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:51.300 despite Scottish artists really being incredibly prominent in the international field. 232 00:15:52.040 --> 00:15:55.920 Interestingly, by the time I got there, that was just three years after it was established, 233 00:15:56.640 --> 00:15:58.420 that DCA couldn't have happened. 234 00:15:58.420 --> 00:16:03.680 And although it was in itself a tipping point for the whole city, as you'll hear, 235 00:16:03.920 --> 00:16:11.720 in my first year in post, the single biggest success story that Dundee had had in 30 years saw its funding cut. 236 00:16:12.280 --> 00:16:19.500 So just as a kind of political stop to a planning decision where the Conservative vote was needed 237 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:21.860 but they insisted on the grant being reduced. 238 00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:26.880 So the make-up of the City Council had changed and we were immediately vulnerable. 239 00:16:27.300 --> 00:16:28.400 Our only dream was to have a new council. 240 00:16:28.420 --> 00:16:29.520 But the leadership wasn't enough. 241 00:16:29.780 --> 00:16:34.020 We needed, as indeed we all need and I continue to need in the role that I have now, 242 00:16:34.180 --> 00:16:39.920 kind of shared vision and aspirations deeply rooted across the political divides 243 00:16:39.920 --> 00:16:44.620 with key individuals at that kind of level, at the political and the funding level. 244 00:16:44.860 --> 00:16:52.240 And also we need evidence that what we do matters in a broad cultural and in a social context as well. 245 00:16:52.400 --> 00:16:58.000 And, as I've said before, the eloquence to communicate the intrinsic values and to tell our story. 246 00:16:58.420 --> 00:17:02.760 We need to keep telling our story and keep finding the right way of doing so. 247 00:17:03.220 --> 00:17:10.060 So 10 years on from its creation, Dundee has indeed, DCA has indeed proved to be transformational in an ongoing way. 248 00:17:10.940 --> 00:17:18.200 Companionship, particularly from the City's Head of Leisure and City Council's Head of Leisure, has been essential to that. 249 00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:28.320 And to a kind of continuing ambition which, to kind of illustrate why, is that the V&A is now creating its first 250 00:17:28.320 --> 00:17:28.400 is that the V&A is now creating its first 251 00:17:28.420 --> 00:17:33.260 space outside London in its entire existence in Dundee. 252 00:17:33.420 --> 00:17:36.660 And that's an amazing thing, it's an amazing thing that it's happening at all. 253 00:17:36.720 --> 00:17:41.180 And it's an amazing thing that a city like Dundee is going to be the home for that initiative. 254 00:17:41.920 --> 00:17:47.300 And again, of course, it's an astonishing shift again in the pride and confidence of the city. 255 00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:51.360 But still always a vulnerable one, as my experience showed. 256 00:17:52.620 --> 00:17:57.020 DCA has been consistently and sometimes dangerously bold in its programming and approach. 257 00:17:57.020 --> 00:18:02.160 It's propelled itself to the front ranks of contemporary art presentation in the UK and internationally. 258 00:18:02.440 --> 00:18:05.440 It's recognised as a leader in its field in Scotland. 259 00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:12.980 And it's literally been credited with changing the face of Scottish art and its perception both at home and abroad. 260 00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:21.620 There's an exhibition called Here and Now, Scottish Art 1990 to 2001 that was absolutely crucial in this area. 261 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:26.820 And though I'm biased, I know I'm biased, I'm going to quote one of our leading art critics. 262 00:18:26.820 --> 00:18:27.000 And I'm going to quote one of our leading art critics. 263 00:18:27.020 --> 00:18:29.680 In Scotland's major Sunday broadsheet, who said, 264 00:18:29.860 --> 00:18:32.800 Two major events changed the Scottish art world forever. 265 00:18:33.340 --> 00:18:37.080 The first was the opening in 1999 of Dundee Contemporary Arts. 266 00:18:37.280 --> 00:18:40.780 The second, their hugely successful exhibition Here and Now. 267 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:46.520 The importance of these two phenomena in bringing new Scottish art to a wider audience cannot be overstated. 268 00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:47.900 They simply made it. 269 00:18:48.020 --> 00:18:50.980 And in the case of Dundee, continue to make it accessible. 270 00:18:51.500 --> 00:18:53.240 They broke down perceived barriers. 271 00:18:53.580 --> 00:18:56.260 More importantly, they told us not to be afraid. 272 00:18:56.260 --> 00:19:00.440 Art, they declared, was more about money, mediocrity and the monarch of the glen. 273 00:19:00.580 --> 00:19:04.580 It was about love, sex, identity, obsession, even sport. 274 00:19:04.920 --> 00:19:12.280 In short, the everyday delights and disasters of being alive, the consequences of this small revolution, have had a lasting effect. 275 00:19:12.980 --> 00:19:19.020 And the DCA has continued its role in defining the profile and position of Scotland's artists, 276 00:19:19.260 --> 00:19:24.380 leading on the creation of the Scottish Pavilion in Venice on their 10th anniversary last year. 277 00:19:24.380 --> 00:19:31.400 The Prince Studio has 200 members, the cultural cinema quadrupled cultural cinema audiences in the city, 278 00:19:31.500 --> 00:19:40.920 and the Community and Education Programme has affected literally tens of thousands of people every year who engage and explore this quite bold and sometimes difficult work. 279 00:19:42.620 --> 00:19:49.680 And they really also have an outlet in combination with that for their own creative endeavours as well, which are displayed there. 280 00:19:50.380 --> 00:19:52.360 It's also created major new events. 281 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:54.300 I mean, one of the things that I particularly worked on, 282 00:19:54.380 --> 00:19:58.820 was bringing in new festivals, new, that connected to the work that already existed there, 283 00:19:58.900 --> 00:20:00.820 but also had their own clear identities. 284 00:20:01.020 --> 00:20:04.460 So we brought in an animation festival, which connected to the industry in the city, 285 00:20:04.620 --> 00:20:07.980 an experimental music and moving image festival, 286 00:20:08.080 --> 00:20:12.280 and Scotland's first international film festival for children and young people. 287 00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:16.820 New ideas and art forms were drawn into those that inhabited the building, 288 00:20:16.940 --> 00:20:19.580 or grew out from the creative cohesions in the city. 289 00:20:19.640 --> 00:20:22.520 So strengths, bottom-up strengths that existed in the city. 290 00:20:22.760 --> 00:20:24.360 Over 300,000 people were involved in the festival, 291 00:20:24.380 --> 00:20:26.120 and people came through DCA's doors each year. 292 00:20:26.220 --> 00:20:29.160 That's more than the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. 293 00:20:29.400 --> 00:20:32.700 And there are queues outside the door every Friday and Saturday night. 294 00:20:32.980 --> 00:20:36.920 It's commonly referred to as the only art centre in the UK that has to have bouncers. 295 00:20:38.020 --> 00:20:44.140 But it's also the place for anyone in the creative or scientific world of the city, 296 00:20:44.300 --> 00:20:47.840 which houses a huge cancer and welcome trust centres, 297 00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:50.720 to meet and greet and eat and entertain. 298 00:20:50.800 --> 00:20:53.840 And it's allowed them to meet across their disciplines, 299 00:20:54.380 --> 00:20:56.480 in ways that simply don't happen anywhere else. 300 00:20:56.520 --> 00:21:00.200 It's become a meeting place for science and industry as well as art. 301 00:21:00.440 --> 00:21:04.080 And people owned it and loved it in their peculiar way. 302 00:21:04.240 --> 00:21:07.460 We ran a survey where we were looking at people who weren't attending, 303 00:21:07.580 --> 00:21:11.440 and 85% of even those who weren't attending, who'd never set foot in the building, 304 00:21:11.480 --> 00:21:12.840 said they were really proud of it. 305 00:21:13.340 --> 00:21:16.300 But we also had a very engaged and critical audience. 306 00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:20.880 I remember being interrupted as I was giving a tour of an exhibition 307 00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:23.280 by a group of international curators, 308 00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:27.560 by an old local man who told me and them, in no uncertain terms, 309 00:21:27.560 --> 00:21:32.760 that the Japanese sculpture whose contemporary delicacy I'd just been waxing lyrical about 310 00:21:32.760 --> 00:21:37.320 was a pile of pish, which is Scottish for not very good at all. 311 00:21:37.860 --> 00:21:42.760 And of course they sometimes love things that they don't even know are part of an arts enterprise. 312 00:21:43.260 --> 00:21:46.400 I used to hijack our toilets and cover them in poetry, 313 00:21:46.600 --> 00:21:49.200 curated by the aforementioned Don Paterson, 314 00:21:49.800 --> 00:21:53.260 so that at least DCA drinkers would have to be forced to engage 315 00:21:53.280 --> 00:21:54.600 with some kind of art. 316 00:21:54.880 --> 00:21:58.420 I also saw it, obviously, as a triumph when they were stolen. 317 00:21:59.140 --> 00:22:03.440 It's through the combination of interconnecting creative outputs 318 00:22:03.440 --> 00:22:07.200 and DCA's committed relationship with artists and audiences 319 00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:09.640 that the enterprise has been so hugely successful. 320 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:12.840 But it's also through boldness and a kind of constant consciousness 321 00:22:12.840 --> 00:22:19.800 of the social, cultural, educational and economic ecology of the city that it lives in. 322 00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:23.260 And it's transformed, not only the culture, 323 00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:24.540 not only a city's sense of itself, 324 00:22:24.840 --> 00:22:28.520 but as importantly how it is perceived by the rest of Scotland and internationally. 325 00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:33.240 And it's through the role that it's embraced as a social and a cultural meeting place 326 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:34.700 as well as a home for art. 327 00:22:34.940 --> 00:22:36.920 And less, let's get down to it, 328 00:22:37.080 --> 00:22:39.100 it's also through takings at the bar, 329 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:43.820 the dizzy attraction of drink, cool architecture and proximity to culture. 330 00:22:44.140 --> 00:22:49.280 An independent economic impact evaluation established that DCA had done this in an unprecedented way 331 00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:52.420 as well as creating 260 jobs for the local economy, 332 00:22:52.420 --> 00:22:57.220 generating a whole series of businesses that have created a new cultural and creative quarter 333 00:22:57.220 --> 00:23:01.500 and literally transforming the way the people in the city interacted socially. 334 00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:04.480 You heard the David Malouf story, there was nobody out there in the streets. 335 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:06.980 So it had changed all of that as well. 336 00:23:07.580 --> 00:23:11.520 Now I commissioned that impact study partly because I was becoming nervous of the hype, 337 00:23:11.560 --> 00:23:15.720 of the narrative that we and my colleagues were, that I and my colleagues were purveying 338 00:23:16.220 --> 00:23:18.060 as a sort of instinctive gusher. 339 00:23:18.500 --> 00:23:21.320 It's a kind of enduring nervousness for me in any enterprise. 340 00:23:21.320 --> 00:23:24.680 But we found that our instincts were actually right, 341 00:23:24.780 --> 00:23:28.140 that the DCA effect, as it became known, was a real thing. 342 00:23:28.480 --> 00:23:32.960 In fact, the independent economist that we employed gave me a serious ticking off 343 00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:35.600 when we were briefing him, or gushing at him, 344 00:23:35.700 --> 00:23:38.460 about how amazing DCA's impacts were. 345 00:23:38.700 --> 00:23:43.640 He was, he insisted, you know, in his Dundonian, slightly humorless way in this case, 346 00:23:43.700 --> 00:23:48.440 an independent analyst, he was a scientist, you know, he needed proof, not my rhetoric. 347 00:23:48.840 --> 00:23:51.300 But rather amusingly, by the time he was done, 348 00:23:51.320 --> 00:23:53.860 he was doing his report, it was actually me telling him to settle down. 349 00:23:54.200 --> 00:23:58.840 Because what he told us was that the creation of Dundee had literally transformed the perceptions, 350 00:23:59.020 --> 00:24:01.160 attractiveness and confidence of the city. 351 00:24:01.460 --> 00:24:05.840 I also commissioned the study because I needed ammunition and substance for our story. 352 00:24:06.040 --> 00:24:12.280 I needed empirical evidence of DCA's importance to make sure our funding was never, ever cut again, 353 00:24:12.420 --> 00:24:17.300 or that I could kick up a huge fuss with some serious, hard-hitting facts if it was. 354 00:24:17.640 --> 00:24:20.760 And while the economic impacts were the focus for this document, 355 00:24:20.760 --> 00:24:24.100 the artistic impacts were as importantly. 356 00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:28.680 After all, as we proved later on in Edinburgh with the research we've just done there, 357 00:24:28.800 --> 00:24:31.480 when it comes down to economic and social impacts, 358 00:24:31.640 --> 00:24:35.320 they only exist as a result of the creative ones. 359 00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.560 So the partnerships that brought DCA into being, 360 00:24:38.620 --> 00:24:41.760 and the many subsequent partnerships it's led or engaged with, 361 00:24:41.800 --> 00:24:47.220 are essential to the artistic drive of the aspirational curves in the city 362 00:24:47.220 --> 00:24:50.640 that take people from schools to colleges to universities, 363 00:24:50.760 --> 00:24:53.880 and ultimately into the workplaces in the city, 364 00:24:53.980 --> 00:24:58.280 in a city now dominated by the creative industries and the biotech industries. 365 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:01.940 It's still an area of multiple social deprivation, 366 00:25:02.020 --> 00:25:07.740 and those curves are absolutely essential to any hope of the city retaining its population, 367 00:25:07.900 --> 00:25:10.220 and indeed to the hopes of that population itself. 368 00:25:11.260 --> 00:25:15.680 It's a remarkable story, and DCA's boldness continues to evolve. 369 00:25:16.020 --> 00:25:20.060 Its ambition now is quite simply to run the cultural life of the city, 370 00:25:20.060 --> 00:25:25.160 in the same way that the old industrial models used to run the economic life of the town. 371 00:25:25.400 --> 00:25:28.300 It wants to explore with its partners in the city what the role, 372 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:31.520 and I think this is interesting for us, it may be interesting for you in due course, 373 00:25:31.660 --> 00:25:35.200 what the role of a cultural organisation is in a non-growth economy, 374 00:25:35.560 --> 00:25:37.640 because I think that's a very interesting idea. 375 00:25:38.080 --> 00:25:41.560 It wants to operate at the root of people's lives in the city, 376 00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:46.300 and the idea of the aspirational curve, it's a very big curve in this case, 377 00:25:46.360 --> 00:25:50.040 it's a 20-year strategy that will ensure that every child who enters the city, 378 00:25:50.040 --> 00:25:55.580 exits primary school in Dundee, has an appetite for culture that's fed by the resources of DCA. 379 00:25:56.200 --> 00:26:00.300 But defining how that story of the future is told continues to be essential 380 00:26:00.300 --> 00:26:04.260 to the sense of common purpose and aspiration that it needs to share with its city, 381 00:26:04.380 --> 00:26:09.100 and Dundee needs to keep telling its own remarkable story to itself with consistency 382 00:26:09.100 --> 00:26:15.700 and with conviction in order to cast off that crown of thorns for good, 383 00:26:15.860 --> 00:26:20.020 and define a new narrative that reflects the best of the possibilities DCA has. 384 00:26:20.040 --> 00:26:25.320 And just so you know, the man at the toll booth and I got on first name terms. 385 00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:29.140 So what about Edinburgh? What's the story there? 386 00:26:29.380 --> 00:26:33.180 Well, Edinburgh is just special, isn't it? It hardly needs to try. 387 00:26:33.400 --> 00:26:40.540 Despite being a resident on and off for 20 years, I'm still literally stopped in my tracks by the beauty of the city. 388 00:26:40.620 --> 00:26:44.920 Just as I walk to a meeting or just step out of my front door, I am still in love. 389 00:26:45.580 --> 00:26:49.240 But beyond the dramatic contours of Scotland's capital, 390 00:26:49.380 --> 00:26:50.020 beyond its historic beauty, 391 00:26:50.040 --> 00:26:53.140 beyond its historic buildings and streets and its innovative new architecture, 392 00:26:53.460 --> 00:26:56.800 beyond its awe-inspiring landscapes, and they are wonderful, 393 00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.820 beyond all the spectacular sort of permanence of all of that, 394 00:27:01.320 --> 00:27:05.940 our city plays host to something very amazing, really, 395 00:27:06.100 --> 00:27:10.640 and wonderfully impermanent by nature, because Edinburgh has its festivals. 396 00:27:11.040 --> 00:27:14.960 And as the heat of mainland Europe sets in in the summer, 397 00:27:15.140 --> 00:27:19.340 we, in what we like to call the expansive freshness of the Scottish summer, 398 00:27:19.340 --> 00:27:23.720 welcome the world into our heady and seductive embrace. 399 00:27:24.040 --> 00:27:27.640 As this very small capital, we are under 500,000 people, 400 00:27:27.940 --> 00:27:31.620 is transformed literally into the cultural capital of the world. 401 00:27:31.760 --> 00:27:38.180