People power will be the key to Dundee becoming UK City of Culture 2017, according to the man spearheading the city’s bid.
Stewart Murdoch said he felt “delight and some relief” at Wednesday’s announcement that Dundee had made the competition shortlist and will now line up against Hull, Leicester and Swansea Bay.
The Leisure and Culture Dundee director said: “We were in no way complacent. We knew the odds and we were always aware that it could have gone different ways.
“I think the continued involvement of people in Dundee to be a city of culture and to contribute to what a year of culture in Dundee will look like is key.
“This is absolutely not a bid about cultural organisations it’s a bid about the city and its own reinterpretation of what it can mean to be City of Culture.”
The Dundee bid team will now have to produce a business plan and presentation by the end of September as part of the next stage of the process.
First Minister Alex Salmond offered his congratulations on Dundee’s success.
He told The Courier: “Dundee is a great Scottish success story with a huge amount to offer. The whole of Scotland will now be backing Dundee’s bid.”
Among the first people to learn of Dundee’s success in making the shortlist were the students, staff and families at Dundee University’s graduation ceremony in Caird Hall.
News of the official announcement was learned by actor Brian Cox, who is the rector of the university. He asked Deyan Sudjic, director of London’s Design Museum, to interrupt his speech after accepting his honorary degree to tell the crowd.
Mr Cox said: “It’s tremendous and it’s deserved for everybody who has worked hard on the bid but now the real hard work starts. We can’t afford to be complacent but we are not like that, Dundonians.
“It’s great news and it couldn’t come at a better time. I had to interrupt the guy who was getting his honorary doctorate and hand him the note and say ‘could you please announce this, this is quite important’.
“The crowd went mad in the Caird Hall.”
Mr Cox said he believed Dundee thoroughly merited its place on the shortlist.
“I think it’s because we are very pioneering, you know,” he said. “We have a lot of history. Never mind the cultural city we are the city of the 21st century, we are coming into our own in the way that we have taken on our issues and changed our waterfront.
“Doing what we are doing, it’s tremendous and pretty exciting.”
Dundee University principal Professor Pete Downes said: “The city is a cultural city in its own right and those are just the things that allow us to express that culture in particular ways. But it’s the people of Dundee that make the culture.”
Professor Nigel Seaton, principal and vice-chancellor of Abertay University said: “Since moving to Dundee last year it has been a genuine pleasure to see how rich and diverse the city’s creative communities are and how readily they all engage with each other, sharing ideas and sparking new projects.”