SOCIAL, CIVIC & ECONOMIC VALUE
Community & social empowerment | International engagement | Tourism | Young people
BUSINESS PARTNER BENEFITS
Corporate social responsibility | Developing community links | Enjoyment | Entertaining | Staff relations & development
The project
The Dundee, Design, Discovery celebration marked the public opening of V&A Dundee over Friday 14 and Saturday 15 September 2018. A multi-disciplinary, two-day music and arts festival, it was attended by around 22,000 people in the city’s Slessor Gardens and broadcast live on BBC2. A signature event within Scottish Government’s themed Year of Young People 2018, it was co-designed by V&A Dundee’s Young People’s Collective and specifically aimed at generating a deep sense of ownership and pride within the citizens of Dundee.
V&A Dundee’s Director of Philanthropy and Parnterships, Barry Ferguson, approached NCR with the concept of staging an event that would complement the opening of the new design museum and provide multiple opportunities for audience engagement, regardless of age or background. A meeting with NCR’s Manager of Customer Experience Programme, Leigh Duncan, and Chief of Staff Finance, Carol Hamilton, established NCR’s clear agenda of giving back to the local community and their existing involvement in supporting learning programmes in local schools and community groups. A new partnership was formed, based on a shared ambition to demonstrate support for the regeneration programme in Dundee.
Having secured early support from DC Thomson and Brewin Dolphin, a commitment from NCR which was match funded by C&BS Fund secured the overall budget required to stage an ambitious project with the aim of shining a national and international spotlight on Dundee and the museum.
The partnership
The partnership between V&A Dundee and NCR not only enabled the Dundee, Design, Discovery celebration to meet its artistic objectives, but opened the door to further creative opportunities too. V&A Dundee have now become a partner in the NCR Student Design Competition, which challenges students in higher education to respond to a brief which asks them to consider how the Internet of Things will transform our world and how (using a design approach) to create a new concept utilising this technology.
NCR’s principal reasons for becoming a sponsor were to give something back to Dundee and engage their own staff in both the city’s heritage and its regeneration. As part of their sponsorship agreement, NCR received 500 tickets for the celebrations, enabling them to engage the vast majority of their workplace in the project. Further events are being planned at the museum to sustain this engagement and extend it to NCR customers too.
