Six Cities celebrate Scottish design

The Scottish Executive has voted to plough £3m into Scotland’s biennial Six Cities Festival, due to kick off in 2007, in a bid to raise the profile of the local creative industries.

The event will focus on six Scottish cities – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling and Inverness – each of which will develop events and initiatives that reflect its own creative strengths.

Though the programmes are yet to be confirmed, Stuart MacDonald, director of The Lighthouse architecture and design centre in Glasgow, says it is likely that the cities will focus on their particular area of expertise. Dundee, for example, might concentrate on games design and film and Glasgow on architecture.

The initiative was announced by Scotland’s First Minister Jack McConnell at the opening of The Scottish Show Comes Home at The Lighthouse.

McConnell claimed that the strength of the creative economy in Scotland enables the country ‘to compete with the world – and lead it’.

‘We will show the world that we have a creative energy and [the world] has to notice. Scotland is on the move. It’s the best small country in the world,’ he says.