Funding milestone from People’s Postcode Lottery
28 January 2016
Support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery for V&A Museum of Design Dundee has reached the major milestone of £500,000.
The generous contributions have supported a range of public engagement projects, reaching communities right across Scotland and inspiring people – young and old – to unleash their design creativity.
This includes the Design in Motion travelling exhibition last year, which took the work of designers to 85 locations from the Borders to the Highlands and Islands, then down to the V&A in London. The support enabled twice the number of venues to be reached as originally planned.
Over 12,000 people saw the exhibition, which was installed in the Travelling Gallery, a custom-built mobile gallery.
Sarah Saunders, Head of Learning and Engagement at V&A Dundee, said: “Community projects are an integral part of the work of V&A Dundee, as they allow us to work with people all over Scotland and share the inspiring, exciting work of designers.
“The support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery allowed us to launch the first V&A Dundee exhibition, Design in Motion, and to showcase Scottish design creativity to thousands of people. It’s absolutely wonderful to bring designers into schools and community centres, to share their skills and creativity with people of all ages.
“As we look forward to opening V&A Dundee in 2018, I’m delighted that we’re already able to demonstrate Scotland’s amazing wealth of design talent and raise the awareness that design can improve lives. Design is also a viable career for our young people, essential to building a stronger economy for the future.”
The milestone comes ahead of the annual People’s Postcode Lottery gala dinner this Thursday, where the millions of pounds raised for charities and good causes are celebrated.
Clara Govier, Head of Charities at People’s Postcode Lottery, said: "V&A Dundee is a uniquely exciting project which is already having a huge impact in communities, engaging with schools and taking designers and their work out across Scotland.
"The players of People's Postcode Lottery have helped spark creativity in many thousands of people already and we look forward to developing more projects with the V&A Dundee team."
Other projects supported by this funding include Living Room for the City, V&A Dundee’s first community engagement project, and the current Schools Design Challenge.
The Schools Design Challenge has involved all secondary schools across Dundee and Angus, with over 1,000 pupils designing ways of improving their schools or school lives. Ten ideas have now been selected, with pupils working with professional designers to develop their ideas further.
The pupils from Morgan Academy designed a ‘worry box’ app, allowing pupils to safely and confidentially share their concerns, working with professional designer Andrew Tibbles.
Judith Steele, Teacher of Art and Design at Morgan Academy in Dundee, said: “Andrew, our designer, was absolutely wonderful with the young people. He put them at ease so quickly, and really listened to what they were saying. His style of informal communication really got the best from them all and he was in control of the situation every step of the way.
“His design expertise allowed him to move the children's ideas along so quickly, and his techniques – getting 'customer' feedback, design thinking strategies – were something I would love to model in my own classroom practice in the future.”
Last year the parent organisation of People’s Postcode Lottery, Novamedia/Postcode Lotteries, was ranked as the largest fundraising private charity donor in the world by City A.M.
In 2014 total charitable giving from Novamedia/Postcode Lotteries reached £469 million worldwide, also making it the third largest private charitable donor in the world behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
