V&A Dundee's new director on Covid, culture, and community
Sunlight floods the first floor of V&A Dundee as its new director looks out, past the RRS Discovery, across the Tay, to the rail bridge and beyond.
“It's just makes you feel you're in this very open, calm sanctuary, in amongst all the turmoil we're all living in,” says Leonie Bell.
Her museum, like every other institution, is not immune from the havoc wrought by Covid across Scotland's cultural landscape.
Currently only open five days a week, it is attracting about 800 visitors a day, compared to the 6,000 that it welcomed on its busiest day after opening in 2018.
Ms Bell, who was named as the new director in July and took up the role last month, said there was “no point in shying away” from the financial impact of the pandemic.
She welcomed the recent £1m in emergency funding that V&A Dundee received from the Scottish government, which is also giving the museum £1m per year in its first decade.
She said: “It's not just on things like ticket sales – the entire events programme that we were running and able to use as levering commercial income is gone.
“And as many cultural organisations know, the impact of giving from other donors is also more difficult than potentially it's ever been.
“So we will use that money really, really well. We'll use it to sustain ourselves but also to have that thriving future.”
Born in Dundee and raised in nearby Newport-on-Tay, Ms Bell returns to the city after leading Paisley's cultural regeneration plans.
Before that, she developed Scotland's first culture strategy in a decade at the Scottish government.
One of the strategy's aims is to “recognise each community's own local cultures in generating a distinct sense of place, identity and confidence”.
I ask why V&A Dundee has not yet connected with the city in the same way as Dundee Contemporary Arts or the McManus Gallery.
The truth about it can be traced here. : เล่นสล็อต
