Scottish Government triples funding for V&A Dundee, as a crucial strand of socio-economic recovery 8 Apr 2021

The Scottish Government has committed an additional £2m per year to V&A Dundee for the next three years, as it officially becomes Scotland’s centre for design. This triples its existing £1m annual budget, with the intention of using design as an aspect of the nation’s long term social and economic recovery. The museum will continue to broaden its partnership projects which already include Design for Business, which works across Scotland to apply design skills to social or business challenges; the secondary education based Schools Design Challenge; and Sewing Box for the Future, a programme with the University of Dundee to address the crisis of waste in the fashion industry. The young  museum contributed £75m to the wider Scottish economy in its first year alone and so is well-placed as a centrepiece of ambitious planning. Director Leonie Bell said “design is one of the most accessible forms of creativity, it is a way to understand the world and to change it for the better… We believe that design offers Scotland huge potential as its looks to its recovery after the pandemic. I am hugely grateful to the Scottish Government for its continued role as the principal supporter of V&A Dundee.” The museum will be reopening on 1st May with a new exhibition on the history of nightclub design. M + H, V&A Dundee, Daily Record (reopening exhibition), Museums Journal