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V&A Dundee have expanded this year’s exhibition programme to include five new free displays, exhibitions and installations, in addition to the major ticketed exhibition, Garden Futures: Designing with Nature and the Scottish Design Galleries.

Displays looking at the design of games and the dancefloor, Scottish fashion, groundbreaking medical care and innovation and an exhibition that explores the fascinating history of Palestinian dress will be free to visit at V&A Dundee in the next 12 months.

On show for the first time in Scotland from today (3 March), and heralding the opening of Garden Futures in May, is a captivating new suspended installation inspired by nature in the museum’s expansive Locke Hall.

The Shylight experience, loved by audiences around the world, is designed by studio DRIFT. The stunning installation of movement and light is formed of large-scale moving sculptures inspired by plant biology and flowers that close their petals at night. Suspended from the ceiling above the museum’s iconic staircase and entrance foyer, Locke Hall, the 11 individual Shylights are formed of multiple layers of silk and powered by robotics.

The Shylights can be seen dancing down from the ceiling whilst opening up, echoing the blossoming of a flower, then beginning to close and retreat upwards again, all at different times, creating a beautiful and mesmerising experience.

Caroline Grewar, Programme Director at V&A Dundee, said: “The arrival of Shylight at V&A Dundee brings with it a captivating new way to enjoy the building. The ‘dancing flower’ sculptures offer a moment of calm and contemplation when they gracefully rise and fall, creating a completely unique experience for everyone who sees them.”

Lonneke Gordijin, co-founder of studio Drift, said: “The design idea behind Shylight is inspired by ‘nyctinasty’, a plant biology term that describes the physical reaction of plants to changes in light, where certain types of flowers close their petals at night to conserve their resources.” “The Shylights echo the cyclical nature of plants and encourages viewers to consider the constant transformation of the natural world and our place within this.” “We are really excited to see Shylight installed within the world-famous architecture of V&A Dundee and on display in Scotland for the first time.”

Previously seen in cities and museums around the world including London, New York, Helsinki and Hamburg, and on permanent display at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Shylight is now free to view in the museum’s Locke Hall.

Advance tickets for Garden Futures: Designing with Nature are now available to book online, with a £1 discount when booking through the V&A Dundee website.

V&A Dundee’s expanded 2025 programme also includes Design Dance Play, offering a fun and accessible way to understand more about game design, the dancefloor and the power of play.

In March, a fashion display opens in tandem with Icons of Style, the new two-part series on BBC iPlayer with broadcaster Kirsty Wark, followed by an exhibition looking at care, community and medical innovation celebrating Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.

V&A Dundee will open the only UK showing of Garden Futures: Designing with Nature in May, exploring gardens from across the globe and how they have influenced the way we design and inhabit gardens today.

In June, Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine conceived and produced in collaboration with Art Jameel, and drawing on the collections of the V&A and the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit will immerse visitors in the history of Palestinian dress, primarily through the ancient practice of elaborate hand-embroidery, tatreez.

Leonie Bell, Director of V&A Dundee, said: "We are delighted to unveil our 2025 programme that emanates from across V&A Dundee’s spaces in Scotland’s design museum. Our 2025 programme brings design to life. This Spring and through Summer, our building will bloom with the Shylight installation of illuminated dancing flowers, heralding the Garden Futures exhibition opening in May, and animating V&A Dundee’s expansive Locke Hall for the first time with a captivating, suspended display. Our programme shares stories of design, new innovations and design’s cultural heritage and its impactful role in our lives from our city, from across Scotland and the UK, and from around the world. It’s a celebration of the power of design and creativity in all our lives, firing imaginations and sparking curiosity for all our visitors. With a diverse array of free exhibits and installations, we warmly invite everyone to explore and be inspired by the museum and our shared world of design.”

V&A Dundee’s expanded 2025 programme includes:

Design, Dance, Play: Interactive Game Projects, 22 February - 27 April, free

Game Designer and Dance Floor Memories are two live projects from Abertay Game Lab with interactive elements for all ages. Game Designer is an interactive family-friendly experience inspired by mini-golf and invites players to design their own mini-golf courses and play them inside the museum. The process encourages budding game designers to experiment with layout, play style and rules to see how the changes impact fun, difficulty, and playability.

Dance Floor Memories is a project that brings nostalgic dancefloor moments to life, offering a glimpse into the design process behind the game. Visitors can record their own dance floor experiences in the sound booth and listen to past dancefloor memories from others. The stories will become part of the game’s evolving soundtrack to form a picture of the importance of night life and the everlasting bonds it can make.

Partners: Abertay Game Lab, Abertay University, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at University of Dundee, Agency of None, Dundee Design Festival, Now Play This, Scrap Antics, Roots Furniture, NEoN Digital Arts

Shylight by studio DRIFT, 1 March – 19 August, free

Shylight is new to V&A Dundee and heralds Garden Futures: Designing with Nature opening in May. The captivating installation is made up of eleven large-scale moving sculptures suspended from the ceiling above the museum’s iconic staircase and entrance hall. This dramatic and delicate work, created by Amsterdam-based practice studio DRIFT is inspired by plant biology and flowers. Shylight descends and blossoms in the air, before retreating and closing with the grace of a dancer. The movement of the work creates a subtle choreography, with each Shylight becoming an object that feels alive with unpredictable, natural-looking movements. Artist duo, Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn founded studio Drift in 2007 and created Shylight following a five-year research period collaborating with engineers, makers and computer programmers. This is the first time the Shylight installation has gone on display in Scotland.

Partners: studio DRIFT

Icons of Style, 12 March – 18 April, free

A new fashion display opening in tandem with Icons of Style on BBC iPlayer, a two-part series presented by broadcaster Kirsty Wark, exploring how Scotland has helped shape the UK and global fashion industries.

The Icons of Style display, originally selected by V&A Dundee’s fashion historian Kirsty Hassard for inclusion in the TV series, spotlights iconic designs from seven Scottish fashion designers spanning seven decades. With Bernat Klein and Bill Gibb representing the 1960s and 1970s, Pam Hogg and Alexander McQueen symbolising the 1980s and 1990s, through to designers Holly Fulton and Charles Jeffrey for the 2000s and 2010s, the Icons of Style display also includes up-and-coming designer and 2024 Glasgow School of Art graduate, Flora Mcfarlane. Each of the designers’ stories are explored further in the Icons of Style TV series, alongside the big moments, trends and personalities from Scotland’s fashion scene.

Partners: Two Rivers Media

Ninewells Hospital: Care, Community and Innovation, 3 May– 14 September 2025

This exhibition places Dundee and Tayside as a site of medical and design innovation - with a focus on Ninewells, the NHS Tayside teaching hospital opening in 1974, and the national, international and civic impact this has had.

Dundee has long been home to medical innovation, significantly impacting countless numbers of lives – throughout the time of Ninewells and predating it. Being pioneers in areas such as IVF, keyhole surgery and the building design itself, the exhibition showcases Dundee as a place of medical advancements. Medical, design innovations and key moments are documented, including the Ninewells Cancer Campaign, opening of Maggie’s Centre in the grounds of the hospital, and offering pioneering IVF treatment since the early 1980’s, and transformative keyhole surgery. The exhibition will also invite visitors to contribute their own stories associated with Ninewells.

Contemporary design stories are told through objects on loan from NHS Tayside and Tayside Medical History Museum, with a focus on responsive design and adaptation which came into force during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future-thinking design, ongoing research and collaboration with University of Dundee in fields such as cancer care and robotics are explored, alongside the social impact of the hospital which celebrated it’s 50th anniversary in 2024.

Partners: Ninewells Hospital, NHS Tayside, Tayside Medical History Museum, NHS Tayside Charitable Foundation

Garden Futures: Designing with Nature, 17 May 2025 – 25 January 2026

This sumptuous, colour-filled exhibition takes visitors on an illuminating journey through key moments of inspiration and innovation in gardens and garden design, from the 20th century to present day and looking to the future of gardens. Highlighting examples of groundbreaking gardens by visionaries including Piet Oudolf, Mien Ruys, Derek Jarman and Eden Project Scotland, Garden Futures considers the garden as much more than a place to retreat, but an outdoor laboratory where ideas for a more sustainable future can be tried and tested.

A fascinating collection of design objects, paintings, textiles, sculpture, interior design, fashion, drawings and photographs show how the enduring allure of gardens influences artists, writers and designers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Duncan Grant and William Morris. Community-led projects in Scotland including Oban’s Seaweed Gardens will feature alongside work by Charles Jencks and the garden designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd at Maggie’s Centre, Dundee. Garden Futures will also look ahead, revealing insights into the power of gardens and how our outdoor spaces can be part of a greener, fairer and more joyful future.

Tickets can be booked online https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/whatson/exhibitions/garden-futures-designing-with-nature Members and 18s and under go free.

Garden Futures: Designing with Nature is an exhibition by the Vitra Design Museum, the Wüstenrot Foundation, and the Nieuwe Instituut. Vitra Design Museum, the Wüstenrot Foundation, and the Nieuwe Instituut. Partners: Stanley Smith (UK) Horticultural Trust

Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine, 26 June – February 2026, free

Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine explores the history of Palestinian dress, primarily through the ancient practice of tatreez – elaborate hand-embroidery.

Tatreez is characterised by remarkable regional diversity, with every area of Palestine proud of its local clothing traditions, making embroidery a language as much as a craft. For centuries, Palestinian women’s dress – its cut, colour, textiles, stitches and motifs – reflected a woman’s identity, character and origins, as well as the changing nature of her life. Written into garments are the signs of youth or grief, the marks of motherhood and rural life, as well as the traces of social, political and economic change in Palestine, from the late nineteenth century to the present.

The exhibition draws on the collections of the V&A and the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, bringing together more than 30 historic dresses from Palestine, alongside veils and headdresses, jewellery and accessories, to immerse a visitor in this living tradition.

2025 marks 45 years of Dundee’s twin city relationship with Nablus, Palestine. Thread Memory takes the opportunity to spotlight Nabulsi dress and tell the story of the historic connection between Scotland and Palestine, through material from Dundee collections and Palestinian archives. Thread Memory culminates in an exploration of embroidered dress today, including newly commissioned looks from contemporary Palestinian fashion designers building upon inherited cultural traditions. Work by contemporary artists engaging with tatreez will sit in conversation with the traditional dress on display, alongside interviews with Palestinian embroiderers. Curated by V&A’s Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Rachel Dedman, Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine is conceived and produced in collaboration with Art Jameel and the Palestinian Museum. It is based on an exhibition of the same title currently on show at Hayy Jameel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Partners: Art Jameel, Jeddah/Dubai, and the Palestinian Museum, Birzeit