The Space is also a place where everybody can experiment with ideas and play with images, text and sound.

Why we like it:
The Space provides access to all of the arts in one place where it is absolutely free to discover and enjoy. Their easy to navigate site allows you to find films including BFI Shorts, musical treats, contemporary dance and performance videos.

Find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

This partnership has recently been able to announce the site – right next to the Discovery ship, on the Tay Estuary. Georgina said that the new museum would be built on an island in the Tay with sightlines throughout the city and even a beach area around it (which might bring the seals to this cultural attraction!)

The building is expected to cost in the region of £47million with one third of the money coming from each of the following sources: Scottish Government, partnership funding from Trusts and Lottery sources, and the final third from money raised by the University of Dundee through private sponsorship (one of Georgina’s responsibilities).

The interior of the building will total 7000 sq m, which, for reference, is about half the size of the Baltic in Gateshead. I found it good to hear that the V&A at Dundee would focus on contemporary art and design work, no earlier than the 1940s, ‘Not an outpost of V&A with decades old collections’. Georgina went on to say that the works on show would be ‘Post 1940s but very much focused on today, with 1200 sq m of the galleries given over to touring exhibitions from the V&A in London (similar to the famous V&A blockbuster with Kylie’s outfits).

The pattern for this would be for the first three years, one V&A blockbuster plus two smaller exhibitions, reduces after that point when exhibitions can be developed and toured from other international organisations that curate design.

Georgina said that she was using the term Design in its most inclusive sense and that the V&A at Dundee would also provide intellectual support for practitioners through its development as a professional centre for those practitioners which would have ownership by the practitioner body of Scotland. It would be looking at collaboration, introducing new thinking, exposing research agendas and drawing on a multidisciplinary pool including scientists and philosophers to deliver new products into the marketplace.

One of the key exhibition spaces will be the Designs On Scotland Gallery which will be about and for contemporary practitioners. This will focus on process as well as products of practice, where often the artwork is the end of one process and the start of the next. The selection mechanisms will always be based on the quality of work. There will also be a special collection from 1940s onwards looking at design.

Recent progress in the project has seen the steering group of the project move to being a charitable trust which will lead the project through to completion. The Chair Person for this trust is likely to be announced next month.

They have also recently called for notes of interest from architects and have been inundated with initial contacts from over 250 practices or individuals from ‘just about every country in the World’.

In March the project will see its most important meeting to date with the Culture Minister and Finance Minister which should be the ‘final pushing of the green button and enable us to fully go ahead with the Architectural Competition’.

Georgina said that she was looking forward to seeing the submissions, but glad that she wasn’t going to be short-listing. It is expected that the large number of applications would be shortlisted to 6-8 who would present their ideas on 3 A1 boards and 1-100 scale models that would be exhibited here and in London.

The project will develop an engagement strategy beginning in autumn 2011 and they expect to open a V&A exhibition in another venue in Dundee, as part of that, before the new building opens in September 2014.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

Barry Esson and Bryony McIntyre gave a presentation about Kill Your Timid Notion, a festival which their Edinburgh based company Arika has run in Dundee (at Dundee Contemporary Arts) since 2003. KYTN can be seen as one of the most successful festivals of its kind within Europe.

As well as KYTN they also do other event and festival projects including Shadowed Spaces and Install. Install, which has a focus on music and performance has taken place at the Arches in Glasgow in the past but is moving to the Tramway this year.

KYTN’s focus has been on experimental sound, image and music and they will continue with this but in a different format this year. The festival, taking place between 21 – 28 February is being built from artist proposals rather than artist objects. In relation to this Barry said that the idea was that ‘films, paintings, sculpture or any object does not incarnate art – the process which produces these is the art’.

With KYTN this year it’s the first time the public focus has been over a week, with Investigations happening right through from Sunday 21 to mid evening on the next Friday. These Investigations will tie in with the artists’ proposals to produce the festival weekend events (and possibly longer term changes / projects and hopefully engagement). The phrase used was: the proposals will be ‘re examined with you the public – people like yourselves and people unlike yourselves’, through the Investigations.

Barry said that he found that the history of theories and practices (especially in his background of sound) was important but should be regularly rewritten. I think that this maybe is related to dealing with / getting free of assumptions – of audience, practitioners and maybe even funders and press about the more elusive or experimental practices that Arika tend to work with, and also I know that it relates to their reconsidering of their own practices as organisers (something I respect and will try to emulate for myself this year).

Arika says that ‘if you spend time with us we will consider it spending money with us’ and so have devised a tally card system that means that if you attend the Investigations you can get gratis passes to the weekend  pay events. (2 investigations = one day pass, 4 investigations = full weekend pass).

If you are interested in taking part – you need to act though as the Investigations are filling up, look at the programme online.

Other free highlights will be a free screening of a film from the legendary British filmmaker John Smith – see you there…

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

Heidi and I are sat at the front of the auditorium, doing some live blogging. Excuse the typos…

Mel Woods is hosting. As well as being head of various postgrad programmes at DJCAD, Mel’s also an artist. She’s talking about some of her projects, including Serendipitous Arena, a project that starts in June 2010.

First up, it’s Yuck ‘n Yum, who are here to talk about their fanzine. Ben and Gail are part of a collective of four who see themselves as a distribution conduit for emerging artists. They’re based in Dundee. But they’re interested in artists based across the nation. They distribute the fanzine every 3 or 4 months (which people who are here are now looking at.)

They started producting the zine in 2005. It began as a DIY project, but quickly grew. They’re funded through a couple of sources, including the Hannah Maclure centre. All of their issues are online on their website – www.yucknyum.com. And you can download and print them – printing on demand they call it.

Yuck ‘n Yum hold events outwith a gallery a setting. They want to engage with the public outside ‘the white cube.’ They want to encourage up and coming artists to engage and perform. All for a fee.

Projects in the past have included handing out free art, free music. Also a bluetooth project called Turn Your Bluetooth On in Inverness. As part of their Windows in the City exhibition they distributed video and audio art via bluetooth to the patrons of a local carpark. Starting point = stupid supermarket campaigns. Why not work that to make it creative?

And moving forward…next launch is early April. Including a submissions deadline. (So then, to get into the new issue of the zine, you send stuff in by the 15th March. Just send a jpeg to submissions@yucknyum.com. They’re keen on AV too – for the website.) They’re also making a mix-tape for KYTN (Arika’s baby – they’re talking later – watch this space.) Plus Annual General Karaoke’s coming up. The idea: get artists to make videos, send them in, do a karaoke night. Like an Annual General Meeting, except not. Possibly including cash prizes. Oh yes.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.