A lack
of space
is limiting the growth of Dundee’s creative sector.
Let’s change that.
Dundee’s Creative Economy drives innovation and inclusive growth. The Creative & Digital Industries are Dundee’s leading sector by total turnover* — employing 3,530 people and 240 registered creative businesses. However these statistics do not fully capture the true numbers of creative jobs in the broader Creative Economy**, the creative students who bring fresh energy and innovation to the city, or all those who are self employed, which is a defining characteristic of the Creative Industries.
With exceptional creative density for a small city, Dundee has a vibrant and concentrated creative sector which is a major contributor to the city’s talent base, economic resilience and social fabric. Dundee continues to position itself as a forward-looking, enterprising city. Supporting and sustaining our creative infrastructure is essential to that effort. Creative businesses, freelancers and cultural organisations are crucial to the city’s future — from cultural life and community development, to job creation and investment attraction.
The Challenge and the Opportunity
Access to creative space to make and share work, collaborate and experiment remains a key barrier for creative practitioners and businesses to establish, sustain and grow their business in Dundee.
There are a number of vital, well-used creative spaces across the city, however Creative Dundee’s Creative Space Survey 2023 showed that:
96%
have struggled to find space in the city.
86%
needed an alternative space to work
59%
have considered leaving Dundee due to the lack of creative space .
There is a desperate need for all types of creative space in Dundee, space which facilitates both the creation and sharing of work. Over the last ten years, a series of closures among workspaces, studios, exhibition spaces and venues alongside significant rent increases by the city’s only creative studio facility has forced many to find alternative space, adapt their business model, downsize, or even leave the city.
Securing further long-term spaces would enable the expanding creative sector to grow into its true size. With space secure, the creative sector can do what it does best: take risks. The success of these ventures powers the Creative Economy in Dundee. Securing space to allow for that experimentation is the path to maintaining Dundee’s reputation as a creative and vibrant city.
Increased space would provide new opportunities for all Dundonians to experience creativity and access the space and tools they need to make creative projects happen. Building robust and dynamic creative spaces is a demonstration of community wealth building in action.
Creative Spaces Create Inclusive Growth
Dundee is recognised internationally for its creativity and cultural strength, but its potential is constrained by a lack of accessible, secure and sustainable space. Ensuring critical infrastructure is in place to enable the sector to sustain and grow are essential.
Recent international studies* have explored the impacts of cultural space on property value, community cohesion, public safety, and neighbourhood vitality. Research has shown that there are significant and demonstrable benefits from the presence of cultural spaces, that these improvements are quantifiable, and that creative spaces put tangible value back into local ecosystems.
Economic and Social Impacts of Creative Space:
• Increased occupancy and property values.
• Increased footfall with a higher density of walkable amenities.
• Longer opening hours supporting an evening economy.
• Increase in pavement cafes and outdoor seating.
• Improved public safety due to areas being busy throughout the day.
• Community wealth building from the provision of third spaces.
• Better health and educational outcomes for residents.
• Promotion of the city through increased publicity, social media and tourism.
Between February 2023 and February 2024, Creative Dundee actively engaged more than 350 creative practitioners, businesses, grassroots organisations and existing creative spaces to develop a collective vision for a network of creative spaces across Dundee.
In October 2023 they launched Hapworks , a project which advocates for creative space in the city, working with partners to establish new long-term spaces, whilst amplifying Dundee’s existing network of creative spaces.
Hapworks strategic aims include:
• Establish long-term space for the creative sector.
• Make creativity visible and demonstrate its value.
• Create space for new ideas and collaborations.
• Build community.
• Boost local economies.
• Create a distinct sense of place.
• Improve opportunities for local people.
• Enhance quality of life.
Through events, surveys and a Creative Spaces Working Group, Hapworks has worked to better understand what space is needed, and what barriers exist to accessing creative space.
The first pilot, Hapworks 00, transformed a vacant city centre retail unit at 7 Castle Street, owned by Dundee City Council and empty for 7 years, into a vibrant creative coworking and event space from February 2024 to June 2025.
Designed as a testbed for future permanent creative space, the project trialed different models — including Pay What You Can coworking passes — and hosted exhibitions, gigs, game jams, screenings, and a series of Hapworks Takeovers , many of which would not have happened elsewhere due to lack of available venues. Hapworks 00 was supported by Dundee City Council through their Vacant to Vibrant initiative and Creative Scotland’s Recovery Fund for Cultural Organisations.
Outcomes:
• Activated an Empty Retail Unit: Hosted over 85 events, welcoming more than 1,400 people to the space for workshops, film screenings, performances, talks, game jams and exhibitions.
• Supported Freelancers and Micro-businesses: 57 coworking days resulted in 361 coworking visits, helping to build networks, foster collaborations and reduce isolation.
• Demonstrated Demand: Confirmed the significant gap in affordable creative space for individuals, startups, and groups to make and share their work.
• Built New Creative Infrastructure: 5 Hapworks Takeovers supported groups to temporarily occupy a city centre unit providing space for development and experimentation, and platforming 65 creative practitioners.
• Gathered Evidence for Long-Term Space: Generated critical data on pricing, access needs, space usage patterns, and community demand to inform future long-term spaces.
• Mobilised Resources: Created staffing opportunities and invested over £11,000 into local creative businesses to animate and deliver the project.
This temporary space was only able to do so much. A series of short leases limited longer-term planning and partnership opportunities to achieve long term sustainability, and varied access needs further highlighted the importance of inclusive design and longer-term stability. The unit’s small floor plan, combined with the lack of private spaces, constrained the ability to have anchor tenants — limiting consistent income and requiring additional investment to support the running of the space long-term.
Despite this, Hapworks 00 reimagined an empty unit through cultural use — offering a scalable model for creative-led regeneration and informing the next steps of the wider Hapworks project.
Economic and Social Impacts:
• Alternative uses for Vacant Space: Demonstrated the role that creative space and the creative sector could play in city centre regeneration.
• Place Activation: Creative programming boosted footfall in the city centre, supporting nearby businesses and the evening economy, improving street vibrancy and perception of safety.
• Community Wealth Building: Provided a visible city centre platform for creative practitioners and micro-businesses to share their work and foster new collaborations.
• Policy Learning: Generated practical insights for future council, property, and creative sector partnerships around space reuse and cultural infrastructure.
• Cross-sector Collaborations: Progressed conversations with the property sector about long-term space.
• Economic Multiplier Effect: Grants and income translated into public-facing activity, creating value for freelancers, micro-enterprises, nearby businesses, and civic vibrancy.
• Social Impact: Enabled community-led events and gatherings, providing much needed third space and improving social cohesion and wellbeing.
• Cultural Visibility: Strengthened Dundee’s image as a vibrant, creative, and inclusive city — promoting it as a destination for culture and innovation.
• Collective Knowledge: A focal point for the wider Hapworks project, bringing together long-term creative space stakeholders to host creative space conversations which advocate and educate.
Photo by StudioQN
Creative Space Demonstrators
The vision for creative spaces in Dundee to date has been generated through a deeply community-rooted process of engagement. We have also built on the concepts tested through Creative Dundee’s pilot project Hapworks 00.
This report suggests three next-step demonstrators Dundee could take forward to build on the work completed to date, whilst continuing to reflect and achieve the overarching vision for more creative space in the city:
1. Vacant Space Activation
Empty retail spaces can be a blight to thriving high streets and communities, often contributing to a sense of failure that can spread up and down a street. As a continuation of the experimental space Creative Dundee led, external funding would support creative communities to activate vacant spaces, transforming them into collaborative work, exhibition, community, meeting or celebration spaces.
These short-term activations would be explicitly designed as a first step in creating longer-term collaborations between landlords with vacant properties and creative projects in need of space.
Impact: Animation of vacant properties will increase visibility and footfall delivering economic benefits, support micro-businesses and freelancers to grow their business, and offer new opportunities for local people, demonstrating community wealth building in action.
