Watch the opening night of the V&A Dundee

The opening of Dundee’s spectacular V&A Dundee museum is to be featured in a special live television show.

The 90 minute programme from BBC Scotland will showcase the extravaganza.

Presented by Edith Bowman, The Opening of V&A Dundee will kick off at 9pm on BBC Two Scotland with the action from Dundee on Friday, September 14 with all the fun of the specially-created 3D Festival, which starts on the eve of the official opening of the building on Saturday, September 15.

The programme will feature performances from headliners Primal Scream and the other key acts Dundee’s own Be Charlotte and Radio 1 Brit List artist Lewis Capaldi.

Edith, from Anstruther, said: ‘I’m incredibly excited to be back in Dundee for the V&A opening and helping to share it with people across Scotland. This is going to be a fantastic event and to have a ringside seat at it for BBC Scotland is a real joy.’

The set from Primal Scream will include the band unveiling a new collaboration with contemporary visual artist and former Turner Prize nominee Jim Lambie, specially commissioned for the opening of V&A Dundee.

The 3D Festival – a name that pays homage to Dundee, design and the city’s spirit of discovery – will celebrate the opening of Scotland’s first design museum created by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

Up to 20,000 people from Dundee, Scotland and around the world are expected to attend the two-day festival which will take place next to V&A Dundee in the city’s waterfront park space Slessor Gardens.

The Friday event and the programme will culminate with the building ‘coming to life’ in an amazing light show, composed and created by Dundee-based Biome Collective, who have worked on the project with design studio Agency of None with technical support from 21CC.
Over the course of the programme, there will be short films including:

Ricky Ross on Dundee’s renaissance; Charlotte Brimmer, who is also known as Be Charlotte, is looking ahead to a bright future for the city; Kirsty Wark will be taking a look inside the building; And there will be film about how the whole project came together, featuring an interview with Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

The movie interpretation of Mark Shelley’s Frankenstein’s Monster

As part of a Dundee season on BBC Radio Scotland there’s a documentary to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which was inspired by her 15 month stay as a young girl ‘on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay near Dundee.’

In Frankenstein Dundee, Tuesday 11 September, 1.30 pm, Billy Kay explores the Dundee connections, Mary Shelley’s relationship with her hosts, the linen manufacturing Baxter family, and the novel’s lasting effects on literature and film.

In her introduction to the 1831 edition of this seminal Gothic novel she recounted how her creative writing began during her stay: ‘It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions of the airy flights of my imagination were born and fostered.’

Mary’s intense relationship with Isabella Baxter, the influence of “The Devil” David Booth, visits to plague pits and witch burning sites, the arrival of the Dundee whaling fleet and experiments in the anatomy classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow with galvinism on corpses – all of these are examined for their influence on a young woman’s fertile imagination and her monstrous creation.

Radio Scotland goes Behind the Scenes at the V&A, Wednesday, 12 September, 1.30 pm. The contents of this impressive building, by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, have remained a closely guarded secret but, for the past months, BBC Radio Scotland has had exclusive access.
Narrated by Lorraine Kelly, the documentary will lift the lid on what’s been going on behind the scenes. The programme hears about the preparation and craftsmanship involved in restoring its fabulous centrepiece – Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Oak Room.

The V&A Dundee looks stunning at night

It also tracks fragile exhibits as they’re restored and transported – a nail-biting experience full of technical challenges and risks and gets top tips from curators on some of the most fascinating objects to look out for. The documentary also discovers the challenge of selecting the best exhibits to bring to life the story of Scotland’s impressive design history. There’s also another chance to hear Designing Dundee, on Thursday 13 September, at 1.30 pm which was first broadcast on Radio 4.

Growing up in Dundee AL Kennedy remembers a grey landscape with few creative outlets. Now the V&A has arrived, she heads home to check out the changes in the city. She recalls a litany of industrial decline, council corruption and dodgy developments in the 1970s. So when she heard the V&A was coming to the city, she couldn’t help feeling sceptical.

Returning to her home town today she discovers a dramatic transformation along the waterfront with the new V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first design museum, providing a beautiful new public space. Traditionally, Dundee is not a city that shouts about its achievements, struggling to have its voice heard over the din of looms in the jute mills and more widely eclipsed in favour of Glasgow’s patter and Edinburgh’s prim posh.

Now though, there’s a new confidence in Dundee’s creative community, with writers celebrating its distinct dialect, street art cropping up in hidden corners and a vibrant music scene has grown from the town’s folk heritage. The question is, will all this creative capital have a tangible, positive impact on the citizens of Dundee.

Following the rush of opening weekend The Afternoon Show with Janice Forsyth comes live from the heart of the V&A Dundee on Tuesday 18 September, at 2pm Janice talks to Museum Director Philip Long and gets a close up look round the galleries, meets some of the designers and curators who have brought the gallery to life and Art experts Natasha Raskin Sharp and Anne Ellis share their highlights. Singer songwriter Gary Clark tells Janice about performing at the Opening Event and there are live performances from Dundee talents Be Charlotte and Andrew Wasylyk.