Throughout November 2025, Urban ReLeaf Dundee delivered a series of free lantern-making workshops as part of the Community Pop-Up Lab programme, leading to participants joining the Dundee Hooley parade on Sunday 30 November 2025.
The workshops invited people of all ages to explore their relationships with Dundee’s greenspaces and waterways through creative practice. Using lantern-making as the canvas to visually express how they think and feel about these spaces, and to create shared public artworks.
About the Community and Culture Pop-Up Labs
The Urban ReLeaf Community and Culture Pop-Up Labs are creative interventions where data meets imagination. The programme commissions artists, designers, and creative practitioners to engage communities, using participatory approaches to interpret Urban ReLeaf data and explore environmental themes in accessible and engaging ways. The lantern-making workshops followed this model, translating community insights into artworks that celebrate local green and blue spaces.
Dundee’s Greenspace Perceptions Campaign
The lantern-making workshops formed part of the wider Urban ReLeaf Dundee Greenspace Perceptions campaign. The initiative encourages people to share their views, experiences, and ideas about local green and blue spaces via the Urban ReLeaf Dundee Perceptions app, as well as through online and paper surveys.
Workshop Delivery and Participation
The workshops were led by local artists Dawn Hartley and Niamh O’Loughlin. They were delivered through a mix of open community sessions and targeted group workshops. Urban ReLeaf worked with a wide range of local organisations, including ScrapAntics, The Maxwell Centre, Douglas Recovery Group, the after-school group at The Attic Lounge, Hot Chocolate Trust, Upperunity, Abertay Students’ Association Climate Café, and the International Women’s Centre.
In total, nine workshops were delivered, reaching 162 participants. Attendance included a strong family demographic, with approximately one third of participants under the age of 16. Each session ran for around 90 minutes, was free to attend, and required no booking. Workshops were designed to be accessible to a wide range of ages and abilities, with participants encouraged to take part at their own pace in informal, welcoming environments.
Lanterns in the Dundee Hooley Parade
The programme culminated in approximately 80 people carrying lanterns in the Dundee Hooley parade, creating a strong collective visual presence in the city centre. The Dundee Hooley is an annual St Andrew’s Day celebration in the city of Dundee, Scotland. The parade is a vibrant street celebration featuring performers, giant puppets, music, and large-scale community participation.
Feedback from participants and partners was overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the effectiveness of creative approaches in capturing community perspectives and fostering a sense of shared ownership over the future of Dundee’s green infrastructure.
Thank You
Urban ReLeaf would like to thank everyone who took part. The Community Pop-Up Lab demonstrated how creative activity can complement traditional engagement methods, offering an inclusive, visible, and celebratory way to bring community voices into public space.