2025 in review: Learning
A year of seeing, thinking, making and doing
It's been a packed year of creative activity for us on the DCA Learning team.
We've won an award, welcomed families, community groups and school pupils to DCA and taken art materials and activities out to events, groups and schools across Dundee and beyond.
As well as our public programme of Messy Play, Soundplay, Craft Sunday, Family Art Lab sessions, our Drop in and Play events and Spring Holiday Pop-up, we worked with groups from NHS Tayside, Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust, Braeview Academy, Options in Life, Kingspark School, Dundee International Women's Centre, Fife College, Care Champions, Breast Buddies and more. Here we take a look back at some highlights from the year.
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Hiya In There Wee Bairn
This year we continued our Hello In There Wee One project (a partnership between DCA, Dundee City Council, NHS Tayside Infant Mental Health Team and University of Dundee) by translating our book for expectant parents into Dundonian Scots. This new edition was launched to celebrate Burns Night and was translated by Taylor Dyson and Alistair Heather with help from families from Douglas Tots Group. Read more about the launch here and watch Taylor reading this new version below.
The project continued to grow and gain recognition throughout the year, taking home the trophy for Creative and Innovative Practice and also being awarded as the Overall Winner for 2025 at the Advancing Healthcare Awards! The project was also shortlisted for Partnership of the Year at the Scottish Charity Awards 2025. You can find out more about Hello In There Wee One here.
Spring Holiday Pop-up
We started the spring holidays with a weekend of activities, mural making and a display of work by community groups and schools in Gallery 1 for Spring Holiday Pop-up. We also welcomed families into Create Space for workshops and to Cinema 2 for Shorts for Tinies.
We welcomed over 300 children and adults came to DCA across the three days and they made some fantastic artwork, from prints and vinyl characters to colourful creatures and happy zebras. It was lovely to see so many families and children making together, trying new things and enjoying the bright space of Gallery 1. They shared some great feedback with us, including:
Thank you for today! We really enjoyed it. Great choice of films and activities, and staff fantastic too!
This was a wonderful workshop. The kids enjoyed it thoroughly. Would highly recommend it to families.
Community partnerships
Throughout the year we continued long running partnerships with community groups and organisations as well as welcoming back newer groups for more creative activity.
ST/ART is a partnership project with Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust (THAT) that started in 2004. Designed to engage individuals who are isolated by their long term health conditions with different creative activities, we held three blocks of creative workshops, each culminating in a celebration and display in Create Space. These covered animation as well as screen printing, lino printing, etching, letterpress, calligraphy, Mokulito and Shibori.
In January, Options in Life joined us for an exciting stop-motion animation course. Over eight weeks the group created a short film highlighting issues around climate change. The film was shown in DCA Cinema in front of a packed audience of family and friends and was displayed in DCA during Climate Week 2025. In the later half of the year, we welcomed Options in Life back for a series of craft workshops - we look forward to sharing more about this in the new year.
Discovery and schools
It's been a fantastic year for school visits. Over 3,600 pupils came along to Discovery Film Festival to experience films and creative workshops. All Discovery screenings for schools were free of charge for the first time, and bus travel was also made free for schools from Dundee. With barriers to attendance removed, more pupils were able to get involved and we welcomed schools from seven out of eight wards in the city.
We also took shorts from 2024's Discovery Film Festival out to schools. Focusing on the curriculum-relevant theme of climate awareness, we piloted short film workshops in six primary schools across the city. Pupils learned about different animation processes and took part in a discussions and activities linked to the films.
Back in DCA, we worked on an exciting printing project with Braeview Academy to help pupils achieve an SQA qualification. Pupils from S3 spent three days in Create Space and DCA Print Studio creating prints that counted towards their SQA Art & Design Printmaking: SCQF Level 5.
Big Give
In March, we took part in Big Give’s Arts for Impact week 2025 which raised an amazing amazing £4,719. This allowed us to provide children across Dundee with access to fun and free creative activities throughout the summer and October school holidays.
We worked with community partners to hold 20 free and inclusive workshops for families across the city and welcomed 977 people for gelli printing, fun with clay, screen printing, word art, a Booknic and more. The feedback we received really showed the impact that this work has made. Here are a few of our favourites and you can read more via the link below.
Groups like this are so important during the holidays.
Good fun and a great sense of achievement.
Very friendly, kind and encouraging. Really nice to have you here - thank you DCA.
Absolutely loved today. So many engaging activities with cool materials.
Create Space, workshops and activity sheets
We also made sure there was plenty for visitors to do at DCA, filling Create Space with art materials and activities linked to DCA exhibitions, covering the wall of Gallery 1 with a Dundee mural, running our monthly workshops for children and adults, and hosting events like Drop in and Play.
Take a look below and some of the wonderful artwork that was made throughout the year and download some of our activity sheets to try at home.
We received lots of lovely feedback from visitors this year - here's just a taste:
Fantastic experience. My son and daughter love Soundplay. My son comes alive with the sound and lights. Excellent experience for children with autism.
We travelled from Glasgow for this very special event - hard to find things where babies can be truly free!
I had a great time, it was fun, and exciting! I got to spend time with my son!
An amazing and informative workshop. So much help provided, a lovely atmosphere and no restrictions on what we want to make which is AMAZING!
Family Art Bags
We ended the year by packing 350 Family Art Bags for Dundee Bairns. This wonderful charity will be distributing these bags of creativity to families across the city, so they can enjoy making some art over the school holidays. Each bag included paper, paints, pens, pencils, stationery and a big pile of activity sheets.
Genna from Dundee Bairns shared:
As always, I am so indebted to you all and really so grateful. It is such a valuable offer for our families.
Thank you!
This is just a small overview of what we got up to in 2025. Thank you to everyone who joined in with our activity - we love seeing what you create!
And a big thank you to the supporters who made all of this possible, including Dundee City Council Common Good Fund, Engage on behalf of the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust, Freelands Foundation, The Hugh Fraser Foundation, Leng Charitable Trust, Alexander Moncur Trust, Gordon Fraser Charitable Trust, Ninja Kiwi, Northwood Charitable Trust, The R J Larg Family Trust, Scottish Government through the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Fund, Tay Charitable Trust, Walter Craig Charitable Trust, William S Phillips Fund, DCA's Patrons, Friends and Members, and everyone who has donated to DCA or supported our Big Give campaign.
Find out more about our Learning team
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