Plans have been announced today for a summer event celebrating Dundee’s cultural diversity and promoting a message of kindness and tolerance.
Full details will be revealed in the coming months, but it’s hoped that the festival will bring together people from across the city to share food, music, performances and stories.
Planning for the celebration is already under way, and schools, community groups and representatives from across Dundee will be heavily involved in its development.
Elements will include a Dundee Kindness exhibition highlighting people and organisations across the city who go out of their way to support people; a procession celebrating the city’s cultural diversity and community groups; activities and a ceilidh in City Square and a shared meal for participants.
The event is expected to take place in the city centre in June.
The city’s political leaders, the SNP’s Mark Flynn, Labour’s Kevin Keenan, the Liberal Democrats’ Fraser Macpherson and Derek Scott of the Conservatives, today voiced their support for the planned summer gathering as a celebration of the city’s cultural diversity.
In a joint statement, they said: “Dundee has always been a city shaped by migration. From the jute mills of our industrial heritage to more recent arrivals, generations of people from all over the world have come here seeking opportunity, safety and community.
“The city’s history is deeply intertwined with immigration, going back as far as the 11th and 12th centuries when Danish settlers and Flemish traders set up home here.
“Later large waves of Irish workers arrived, especially post-Famine, and later German Jewish merchants, South Asians, and Polish migrants set up home on the north bank of the Tay estuary.
“These communities significantly shaped Dundee's culture, economy, and social activism, creating vibrant neighbourhoods and contributing to its unique multicultural identity, alongside internal Scottish migration from the Highlands.
“We would highlight too Dundee’s long history of emigration, with sons and daughters of the city warmly welcomed in all corners of the world as they sought new horizons and built new lives.
“That proud history of migration continues today. In recent years we’ve welcomed and supported people fleeing conflict in their homeland, for example from Syria or Ukraine.
“Here in Dundee, we want to be known for compassion, fairness and truth.
“Through our actions, including the celebration planned for the summer, we can help create a more welcoming city, where everyone feels safe, respected and supported.”
Dundee City Council
Dundee draws skilled workers from a 60-minute catchment population of 640,000 and has a local population of over 140,000. The availability of a large pool of highly skilled labour is a key feature in the Dundee economy. Flexibility in the labour force is currently more prevalent in Dundee than in Scotland as a whole. All forms of labour market flexibility - part-time, temporary employment, self-employment and shift work - are widely operational within the city. Labour force stability in the city is excellent, enabling companies to plan with confidence. Labour turnover levels are less than 5% and absenteeism averages 2%.
