Leonie Bell

Simon Stephens, the head of publications and events at the Museums Association, meets Leonie Bell, the director of V&A Dundee. The venue, which opened in September 2018, was designed by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

V&A Dundee has been riding high on the success of its Tartan exhibition, which closed on 14 January and has been receiving rave reviews from critics and visitors. Its next big exhibition will be Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World, which opens 29 March 2024.

Leonie, who has had a wide range of roles in the cultural sector, tells Simon about becoming part of the local community, the joys of popular culture, why Dundee is such a great city, leadership in the cultural sector, and her love of architecture.

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Music: The Right Direction © 2020 by Shane Ivers, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Transcript

Simon Stephens I'm Simon Stephens, the Head of Publications and Events at the Museums Association. We are a campaigning and values led organisation that has been exploring what radical practice and activism means for museums for a number of years now. Our current campaigns include decolonisation,

I'm here in Dundee to interview Leonie Bell, the Director of V& A Dundee, for our Radical Museums podcast. Leonie has been the Director of V& A Dundee, which is Scotland's design museum, since October 2020. Leonie has had a wide variety of leadership roles, from the Future Paisley Partnership at Renfrewshire Council, to working at Scottish Government, Creative Scotland and the Lighthouse, Scotland's centre for architecture, design and the city.

V& A Dundee celebrated its 5th anniversary in 2023, having first opened its doors to the public in September [00:01:00] 2018. It was designed by renowned Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma. The museum has been riding high on the success of its Tartan exhibition, which closed on 14th of January and has been receiving rave reviews from critics and visitors.

Its next big exhibition will be Photo City, how Images Shape the Urban World, which opens on the 29th of March. Let's go and meet Leoni. Welcome to the Radical Museum's podcast.

Hi, Leonie. It's great to see you. I wanted to start off by asking you what you enjoy about your role here at V&A Dundee. 

Leonie Bell I do describe it as a dream job. I love working at V&A Dundee. I love the energy of the place, the ambition of it, the team that's here, the relationship we have with audience and visitors, and the fact that actually I really do believe without any exaggeration that we're having a catalytic impact and we're also still learning and getting better all the time and the joy of being able to work in a young organization. A young museum that's focused on design is just such a privilege. 

Simon Stephens And, uh, obviously we're here to talk about the V&A Dundee but I'm interested to hear about your compares with your previous role in Paisley. Uh, that sounded a really interesting, uh, job as well. Uh, and it was a couple of years ago you moved, wasn't it?

Leonie Bell But yeah, and I was only in Paisley for two years, but Oh, Paisley's, such a beautiful time. Was so much soul and even the word radical that you've given to this. This podcast and that we sometimes use when we're talking about V& A Dundee as well. I really think Paisley embraced that idea of what radical change is.

I still think out of all of the, you know, the towns and cities across the UK that are grappling with what the future of a of a high street is. I think Paisley are doing it better than. better than most of us, to be honest. I think the fact that they're reimagining their museum, putting a beautifully designed library right at the heart of their high street, they've moved their museum collection into, you know, the basement of an old littlest department store again on the high street, developing their town hall.

Just looking at, you know, the center of a town as a civic and cultural convening point that brings visitors and citizens and residents together. not just for commerce and retail, but for a whole different host of reasons, as well as being a gateway in and out of the time with the train station there, I just think is great.

And I suppose my job at Paisley was to try and make good on the ambitious plans that had been cemented when the UK City of Culture bid, which of course Paisley weren't successful for, but the council did this incredible, I thought really sort of transformative commitment to still trying to create the outcomes that would have been created with that year, but without the year.

And I mean, and to be really honest, I would have stayed there longer if the V&A Dundee job hadn't come up and just completely stolen my heart, you know, as I've already said. But yeah, the Paisley job, I guess, was really good for me in that I'd gone from government, national government, Scottish government, to work on developing Scotland's cultural strategy.

I'd wanted to go more local. I'd felt that I needed to go back to, I guess, the people that are impacted by the policies and strategies that you're, you're talking about. And Paisley felt like the place that was really working in very innovative and radical ways on that, um, really empowered community organizations.

That we're building the local authorities ability to work true and truly empowered ways I suppose with people. I learned so much in those two years and because ultimately you're swimming alongside really challenging service delivery kind of pressures. But also trying to build an ideas of hope and long term future thinking beyond political tenure.

So, every job I've done is contributed, I think, to my ability to. to lead V& A Dundee. They may not, I haven't come through a linear museum route at all. I'm not steeped in museology by any stretch of the imagination. It's possibly where I started, but I've deviated hugely from that. And I, I rely on the expertise of my colleagues and partners and some of that, but I do feel that really diverse range of organizational roles.

I've had of different positions of leadership with quite internal and external kind of, um, focuses, I suppose, I think about that all the time in my everyday job here. V& A Dundee. 

Simon Stephens Yeah, we'll get on to your approaches to leadership in a bit, uh, but before that, for listeners who don't know Dundee, and obviously you've already mentioned you were born here, what, what kind of city is Dundee?

Leonie Bell Oh, I mean, it's great. Come if you haven't been, everybody that's listening. So Dundee is on the northeast coast of Scotland. Um, We look a little bit like a Scotty Dog on the map, just north of Edinburgh, for anybody who studies maps or the weather map. It's a really small city and we're very linear. We hug the coast of the River Tay, one of the most powerful tidal rivers in the UK.

So we're a south facing city, which means that we have incredible light. Credible views of horizons all the time, sunrises and sunsets to die for. And then behind us is agricultural landscape and hills. So we're Scotland's smallest local authority by geographic boundary. You could probably walk the length and depth of us in a day if you were pretty fast.

But we're, we're a post-industrial city. The city's wealth was formed around textiles and that became, so the dominant textile became jute. [00:06:00] So trading with Asia and then the connection between the jute industry and the whaling industry. So it was a, you know, always a port and harbour town and city, um, you know, there's many cities and towns around the UK that have similar legacies, um, a similar story as well of extreme wealth for some built in Dundee, uh, but that wealth never probably being shared equally across residents of the city.

I think that's probably still true. today. So really steep decline in the city through the shutting down of all of its mills and other big kind of industries that it had, including Valentine's, uh, huge green card and postcard firm that we did a show on last year. Um, so steep industrial decline through the late seventies, eighties, and into the nineties, what you've now got is a small city of around 151, 000 people.

So it's really small size of some London. But as if not smaller, but with incredible ambition and incredible heart and soul, really, really trying to be honest about its challenges and its background, but also saying that it's creativity, it's culture, and actually it's really long history of design. The fact that we're the UK's only UNESCO designated city of design.is for a lot of reasons. It's not just for V& A Dundee, it's because there's an understanding of design across the universities that are here, across the schools, there's an incredible cultural sector. So being brought up here always had access to culture, whether that was the Beano or the McManus or the Rep or not being far from Edinburgh, all of that kind of really mattered in the city.

It made some really probably quite poor planning decisions at certain times. It cut off access from the river to a lot of its residents at a certain point. So one of the we're here as V& A Dundee in this extraordinary building. that I don't think there's really another bit of architecture like in the UK.

It isn't just to create a design museum, a new gathering place that can convene. It's also to knit together the urban form with the incredible natural landscape that we have, with that agricultural landscape, but also that river, which just really kind of bounces the light around and calms you down, even if you're having a tricky, a tricky day.

Simon Stephens Yeah, you've mentioned already, the city's already got quite an amazing, especially with museums, culture offer with, uh, McManus, you mentioned Dundee Contemporary Arts and the HMS Unicorn and Dundee Heritage Trust. But obviously the big thing that happened, uh, a few years ago, in 2019, was it, when V& A Dundee opened?

Leonie Bell 2018, September 20th

Simon Stephens I knew I'd get that wrong, a year out. Uh, but that's, that must've had, uh, a big impact on, on the city. What kind of impact has it had since the opening? 

Leonie Bell I mean we hope, I mean obviously we hope a really positive one but actually there's lots of, there's lots of, you know, views within there and we're really honest about those and I feel personally part of my leadership is to really embrace scrutiny and we are the, we are huge in a small city and a lot of that's to do with the power and the reach of the V& A brand in itself.

I think it's accelerated what we can do in terms of developing exhibitions like Tartan, people's interest in us. Um, and I do feel that we have probably become not only catalytic in terms of the visitor economy, but of course the impact of COVID the cost of living crisis that has come in as we just that we're getting our heads around the impacts of COVID.

They're for real for every citizen business in the city. You know, when you run a museum, you're not just running a museum, you're running a charity, a visitor attraction, a cultural organization and a business. Really hard targets. And we're very, very conscious. that for us to succeed, everybody has to succeed.

We cannot think of ourselves as an island. And sometimes I think being on the newly developed waterfront is sometimes a sense that maybe we're apart from the rest of the city, but we really don't want to be that at all. We're continually thinking about our root system and the stitches that we make that connect us, how we reach out and how we gather in.

So yeah, we're about to, in September, when we hit five, um, publish a report which will give what we hope is some really interesting data, not just for us, but for all our funders, for Dundee, for Scotland, and actually for other cities that are looking at how they develop and think about their futures, which we hope will show not only the impact we've had on the visitor economy and why people come to Dundee, how they spend when they're in the city, but actually we've become an [00:10:00] iconic emblem of physical change.

But for us, it's not just the physical change that's important, it's the social, the economic, the cultural. all of that together. But, you know, there was probably perceptions of Dundee that it was a city that, that was struggling. They did have some real socioeconomic challenges. Some of them still got, you know, really, really true for people's experiences, but at the same time.

We're trying to improve the aspiration, the confidence, and the outlook. And I think to do that through culture, through a museum that is highly networked to all those other organizations, some of which are building based, but some of which are, like UNESCO and Creative Dundee and all of those other organizations that just support, that support not only the places, but the people, um, is really, really important for us.

So yeah, we think we've made significant impact. And we will continue to improve upon that. That's, you know, the thing that I come in every day and, and think really hard about that. How do we interact with the city that hosts us? You've mentioned it already, really, in terms of it being a large [00:11:00] organisation and the impact, but how do you approach working with communities in the city as a large organisation in an iconic building on the waterfront?

I mean, in lots of different ways. So I suppose one of the things that I was struck by, um, no, maybe before, when I started, one of the things that the organization did that I think is exemplar before it opened was an incredibly intense pre opening engagement program. So it didn't have the building then, it had the ideas about the building.

But it went out across the city on buses. It went to, you know, neighbourhood community centres, went out across Dundee, the region and the country. And it also developed programmes that were engaging schoolchildren in design, all those sorts of things. And that was really, really good. So it built the sense of hope and optimism and advocacy of us.

People became champions of us, not just you championing yourself. The building then opens to. unbelievable interest and numbers coming in, more numbers than the organization had anticipated, and also more scrutiny, I think, than the organization had anticipated. And [00:12:00] because of that socioeconomic backdrop to Dundee, the fact that we're big in a small city, I think there was also an expectation that we would, within a few weeks, solve a lot of problems.

We're absolutely part of a solution, and we need to be at the table where those bigger kind of things are spoken about. But in terms of where we're now at and how we work with communities, I think it's a mix of looking at the dynamic of how we reach. How we draw in and how we reach out. So we have a building we want to bring people to.

Not everybody wants to come here though, and there's lots of reasons that we really respect. So how do we also go out? We have an incredible schools program. We're probably engaging with every school in the city and beyond. The plastic exhibition we did. From the office of mine that we're sitting in now, up above us, I could hear every day hundreds of kids feet running across our museum floor and they'd also been engaged in the curatorial development of some aspects of that show.

So not only looking at how we bring in through targeted programs, but how we engage and participatory and co design methods and how we're creating content. Because through that, you also create something that's relevant. And I think you breed love and loyalty from your local communities if they see themselves in it and if they have a stake in it.

So for me, all of our visitors, all of our audiences, all of our communities and neighborhoods in Dundee are our primary stakeholder. So the way that we often think about how we treat funders and sponsors is how I also want to treat all everybody within the city. What they feel about us matters and how we develop relationships and almost contracts with them really, really matters too.

So we think so hard of that. But I was listening earlier to a podcast, actually, one of our board members, Adele Patrick, with your colleague Sharon Heal, and so I walked in by the riverside today and Adele said something that actually just really, really kind of gripped me, which is not just how you work with communities and how you become a community.

I just thought, gosh, that's what we all really should be striving for, isn't it? And that's different communities. It's your local community, your design community, your museum one. You know, also we think about our civic role. How do we work with hotels, businesses, universities? Just thought, gosh, if we all achieve that, then we're doing good.

Simon Stephens Yeah. Adele's organization, Glasgow Women’s Librarym is obviously a fantastic example of that and does absolutely amazing work, doesn't it? I think our listeners also be interested to hear about, uh, the architecture as well of the building, obviously, uh, what we'll put, we'll put a image on our website and things like that.

But I was saying earlier, wasn't I that when you, you, when you see it, if in person for the first time, you know, it is, the photographs don't really, can't really do it justice. It is an extraordinary building. Can you tell the listeners a bit about the, the architecture and uh, and the, and the Japanese architect who designed it?

Leonie Bell Yeah, I'll try. Kengo Kuma is often called a star architect, but I think actually that undermines the depth of his thinking. I think he's an, he's such an intelligent, creative professional and maybe have to qualify everything I'm saying, which I am probably one of the world's biggest architecture fans.

I love architecture. It shifts something in me. I get a physical, emotional, intellectual reaction to the ability of architects to change how we interact with, you know, ourselves and our daily lives. Um, and actually I think what Kengo Kuma has done in V& A Dundee has created something incredibly special that I cannot believe I get to work here.

But the building is also an engineering marvel, uh, to some people who maybe like me are fans of modernist and brutalist architecture. It's a very gentle, brutalist building. It has, uh. what appears to be, uh, these concrete fins that are attached to the outside of the building. The building's ground floor is smaller than its upper floor.

So the building twists and leans and performs in ways that if you actually study it, you can't really imagine. It leans out over the river, it has pools around inside it as well, so water and reflection and light. Like Charles Rennie Macintosh are materials in the hands of an architect like Kengo Kuma.

He's a really spiritual architect and that he also. really thinks deeply about how you feel when you move around a building, um, and he really, really just wanted to create something that not only spoke to the urban form and language of V& A, of Dundee, but also that speaks to the geographic coastal position of Dundee.

So we've got this great thing called the Handling Collection, which our brilliant visitor assistants kind of introduced to visits, and there's a picture of the, um, the coastal cliffs up the east coast of Scotland up to Orkney. And even though the building is cast externally in concrete, it looks so like these ancient cliffs that have been there since deep time.

Um, and then I suppose in terms of kind of maybe less conceptual kind of ideas about the building, what Kengo Kuma has done is create a new public civic space. It's outdoors that has got a new beach and a play park next to it. Um, and it connects the train station and the, you know, the pavements of the city, but it's also created indoor public spaces.

So he really wanted to create a museum that was 21st century. He didn't want it just to simply be about, a conversation that was transactional between visitor and object on planet with caption. They wanted to think really hard about how we would maybe use different sorts of activities, different ways [00:17:00] of curating and presenting objects and not just object based programs to work with the architecture, but also sometimes to work against it.

I think he's a really kind of creative sort of thinker. So we often think of the building as our greatest object actually. And I think sometimes we're a little bit shy of it. It's a really atypical building. As you've seen this morning, I guess. It's got big cathedral like open spaces, the windows are, you know, have their own sort of function and role.

They're not just to bring light in, they make you kind of, they make, you know, they draw the light in, in different ways as well. You can play on them. Kids can crawl upstairs, climb on the benches and get different views and all of those sorts of things. It's a serious building, but I think our job is also to make it a really, really cool place, aplayful and joyful building that you can come to just to be as a bit of a sanctuary as an everyday place, but also to actually come and kind of stretch yourself a little bit. And the architecture really helps us to do that. It's, it's incredible working in a building that makes you think differently.

Simon Stephens Yeah, it's quite a radical building in a sense, isn't it? And it allows you to do fantastic things, obviously. And one of those things which we've just seen in the galleries is the Tartan exhibition. We can't not talk about that, obviously, because that's on now. So can you tell us a bit about how that exhibition developed and then the impact it's had since it's opened? Because I know you've been pleased with the reaction. 

Leonie Bell Oh, we're so pleased. And actually, even the challenge is telling you a little bit about Tartan because we have been living and breathing and thinking and sweating Tartan. The team from longer than I have since. Certainly since I started in October 2020, you know, the idea of Tartan as a show for V&A Dundee's fifth birthday is, for me in museum terms, close to genius.

Um, it's Scotland's greatest cultural icon. Some people have seen it as something that is cringy and represents a Scotland that is stereotypical and cliche, but actually what the show does with Unbelievable force and energy, steeped in really deep curatorial research, presents something about what tartan actually means, not just what it is.

So we look at tartan and its grid structure and how it's, how it's quite simple and restrictive grid just keeps blooming anew in the hands of creative people over centuries. How it started as a highland craft, a very simple material to protect against the climate. It's colours and form by the plant dyes available, you know, close at hand, and it has become one of the most mass produced textiles in the world, possibly, and it's registered in a way that no other textile is.

It's classified to a degree that no other textile is. It is Scotland's cultural icon. And somehow, not only does it endure over centuries, it's moved from a simple highland craft to a material that was taken to the moon and back, that it is at home in royal palaces. on backs of punks as it is on princesses.

It's political, it's powerful in that it represents radical revolutionaries as well as the state, as well as the military. It's also a souvenir that means something. One of the things that we're delighted with, we have borrowed from some of the most established and specialist and important collections from around the world.

It's an international show, but also that the show's heart is something called. People's Tartan, one of our curators, um, came up with as an idea that we just love and we think now will become characteristic of how V& A Dundee not just thinks, but practices exhibition making is that for us as a museum that doesn't collect, it's really important that we think about new ways of understanding collections and the collections that sit in museums represent sometimes one story.

They're being collected because certain people have chosen to collect those things as relic of their time or their power or their influence, but through People's Tartan, we're also seeing that what you collect. What you keep as souvenirs of your, of your family or personal history, the things where you've celebrated or where you've mourned or where you've come together, as important as what are in the collections of, you know, national museums or galleries or the great fashion places, and all of that is upstairs.

presented with no hierarchy, and we just really, really love that. And the audience's reactions to it, I think I was saying to you earlier, we didn't sleep the weeks before Tartan opened. We were, we have supercharged it. We've given it everything. We believe in so much that we hope it can go on beyond its time here on tour.

But actually, I think what you come out with, we haven't told it in a linear, chronological way. We look at it through grid, innovation, power, identity and ideas of transcendental Tartan. You know, you just have this interdisciplinary, really wide ranging mix of stories told through objects and text and film and theatre that just really talks about how one textile actually makes us understand ourselves.

And you mentioned it's very multifaceted, isn't it? You mentioned, you know, it touches on politics, it touches on obviously Scottishness. on fashion, obviously. Has that kind of broad appeal, has that been, has that been reflected in the visitors? Has it had a broad range of visitors who've been interested?

It really has, um, really has. And we, we hoped it would, you know, we had a, we had a deep instinct that, that it would land really, really well. But I actually think every one of us is delighted, you know, it's not only generated the most impact. That we've had since opening an incredible media campaign, but through even just establishing V& A Dundee in the eyes of our peers in the museum and wider cultural sector, the response has been amazing.

And then, yeah, you know, the most important people coming into our visitors and our audiences, not just locally. But around Scotland and around the world, the sense I get, and every day I'm in the office, I go up and spend time there and chat to the visitor assistants about how people are reacting to it.

And one thing we're seeing is that people are spending longer in Tartan than they do in most shows. They're going out and popping out for a cup of tea or to go to the loo and then they're coming back again. We also think it's creating multiple visits over time. There's lots of reasons why we've given it a long run.

We think that's the right way ethically to treat the money that we've got, um, sort of prudent economic kind of use of, you know, public investment, but also we just really believe that there's stories that are worth revisiting there. But yeah, I guess we've got young people coming in who are maybe interested in fashion.

We've got people coming in that are interested in the relationship and clans and the classification of, of tartan. We've got people coming in who are really interested maybe in the science behind the technology of how you mass produce, people that are interested [00:23:00] in just ideas of Scottishness from around the world and locally.

And the sense that we're getting is that people are responding really warmly to it, emotionally to it. It's making them feel things. And the fact that it's generating feelings is just what we want to be about, actually. It can have that broad appeal. 

Simon Stephens Absolutely. And it must be great for the whole, you know, you and the whole team to have a big sort of hit and a great reaction. It must create a sense of dynamism and satisfaction across the whole museum, which is fantastic. Uh, and you mentioned earlier in terms of, you know, your career history and, you know, not sort of steeped in museology, but, uh, how do you kind of approach leadership in, in the museum?

What's your, what's your way of approaching and leading the whole museum? 

Leone Bell I mean, I'm trying not to say what I said at the Museum Association conference, which was just not to be kind of like, you know, bad at it, but I actually mean that really seriously. Um, so I, this is the first, this is the first job in my career where I have been the [00:24:00] singular figurehead, if that makes sense.

And I think about that all the time. And, um, I think I've learned some really. Powerful lessons when I start is like I, and I think through those lessons, I've, I've hopefully got better, but I guess I am, I absolutely believe in leadership as influence and leadership as creating a set of as was a culture and a set of circumstances where I think about what I have and what I've gained and how I can share and empower others be an organization that I suppose thinks about the development of ideas from a community.

broad range of backgrounds of people that work here, but also that don't work here, but that are our constituents, if you like. Um, so I try and do it in a generous way, um, non authoritarian way. I really do believe that I am here to connect and enable others. It's really hard to actually do that because actually sometimes people just want to know what you think.

And that was one of the lessons that I learned is that I'm quite a speculative, I think, creative person. I think I have a. [00:25:00] So I think sometimes when I first came in, I was really speculating. What can we do? And I think actually people just wanted to firm footing because they were in COVID. They weren't here.

I was here. So there's a balance of how you, how you speculate, how you encourage conversation, how you encourage widespread idea development and kind of diverse thought coming together, but how you also give people a sense of what their scope is, what their set of responsibilities are. So I've learned an awful lot about that.

I learned so much about the. tone that I use, the language that I use, my verbal communication, my non-verbal communication, building a sense of what our North Star as an organization is, but in a highly consultative way is a really good thing. It's also a really tricky thing because some of these people are just like, I just want to know what I need to do now.

And how do I say no, because we're doing too much. And, you know, I really also want us to be an organization that brings different sets of expertise together. I, there's hierarchy within V& A Dundee. I report to. There's a senior management team, and then there's, you know, other kind of layers, but we try really hard, I suppose, to try and work to create bloodstreams across those, I suppose.

I think one of the things we're also really trying to do is talk really honestly about it's okay not to agree, it's okay not to all think and feel the same, to have different ideas and coming together and talking that out. So for me, the expertise of our visitor assistants. Our operations teams, our media team, all, all that expertise swims together with our curatorial program expertise and how do we create an organization that's deeply respectful of that, but then can also make really clear decisions.

So that's a really kind of wooly answer, but I think I just really believe that good leadership is rooted in a real sense of you being very attuned to the context that you're in. I'm really thankful for the job that I've got and I just try and do it to the very best of my abilities and that sounds really quite boring.

I also believe that the vision we've created for V& A Dundee and the sense of energy. So I think for me personally, like so many people that have leadership roles, I sometimes I feel confident and sometimes I don't, but I think probably what makes me do this job okay is my energy. got quite high energy levels and it's not energy just in terms of going at speed it's just I really really believe that what we're doing here is unique and that the team is extraordinary the building is extraordinary the organization is the family of museums were part of with the V& A love all of that so much so if you can bring your motivation with your experience and your knowledge and your commitment to good ethical leadership, then I hope we've, we're really, really sustaining ourselves towards a prosperous future.

No, I like the metaphor of creating sort of bloodstreams across the organization. Obviously there's, there's hierarchical vertical links, but creating that sort of the horizontal links is always really important, isn't it? It's crunchy stuff, you know, it's, it's not, it's not always perfect. And I suppose what I'm realizing, maybe I've always realized is that you.

But your leadership doesn't, it just needs to give space to that and let those things kind of work through a little bit as well, because I'm conscious that we're so young. I've been here like two and a bit years now. So the job that I have also is to have a different sort of horizon outlook to some of the other roles the organization has.

So, you know, I need to think about what we're doing this afternoon and tomorrow as much as I'm really trying to think about what we're 10 years’ time. So, outlook and mindset are really important in leadership to me and I, I try and get out and about as much as I'm here. because I do feel that your feet, those things feed each other all the time.

Um, and for museums, I, I also think really, I try to think really hard and encourage us all to experience, have physical field trips, but also intellectual field trips across all teams, so that we're learning from others, so that we're really attuned to what's happening now and really thinking about the future.

Because museums often, of course, because they're often collection based, think so much about conservation and how they keep hold of what happened before, but for us, to be a vital, energetic organization. The conversation that we have internally and externally, and how we're this place that convenes, is really, I think, at the heart of the leadership that I hope I'm bringing to the organization.

Simon Stephens And you've mentioned, name checked, another fantastic museum lead earlier, Adele Patrick. But is there anyone else in who's sort of inspired you in your work, lead or otherwise, over the years? 

Leonie Bell Yeah, I mean loads, and I've, sorry, yeah, I'm name checking Adele, that's because she's on our board too, which is great, and I also really love the kind of disruptive work that Zandra Yeaman, who's also on our board at Hunterian, is doing, so there are, there are museum leaders that, that do inspire me, so many of them, there's leaders across sectors that inspire me, and they're not always at the top of the organization, I think I, I suppose maybe it's, Back to the previous question as well.

I believe that leadership exists across an organization, across society. And I think generally what we've been seeing in the last few years is some extraordinarily bad leadership. And actually, sometimes you learn from that. You learn when you see in relief what you don't want to be as well as what you do.

But I also, I suppose, occasionally back to my sort of love of architecture and design, because I think it is the most powerful form of creativity, literally. can inform every single aspect of our lives. So I am really inspired by what creative people do, what architects can achieve, what designers can achieve, what filmmakers achieve, what fashion designers achieve, what artists achieve.

I'm also really inspired by their leadership, even though it's not organizational based. And I'm also, I think, really keen on, and sometimes as a museum professional, this maybe sets me apart a little bit, I'm a massive fan of popular culture, you know, I was brought up in the eighties and nineties where smash hits was my Bible.

Listening to the charts was my Bible. I was always thinking about what I was wearing and fashion and, you know, I guess I'm, you know, I went to see Barbie before I saw Oppenheimer and even just thinking about Greta Gerwig, I just love her ability to Take something highly populous that some define as too capitalist, but I see it as a really powerful, that film is a powerful exploration of material culture.

And so people that can take a popular form of material culture and create something like Barbie or create like with the curatorial team here done with Tartan. I'm really interested in where that leadership comes through. So it's not just organizational leadership that gets me going. It's, it's the people that are creating things and making a difference.

And for architects, especially, it takes so long to deliver the best of architecture, but if you make it, even the kind of everyday architecture, social housing, really good pavement, really good park, public bench, just a lot of that stuff. That's what really keeps me going as well as, you know, those kind of great kind of cultural leaders that we've got around us as well.

Simon Stephens Yeah, I think it'd be fair to say that popular culture has traditionally been probably looked down upon a bit by museums, but I think that, I think that is changing. 

Leonie Bell Yeah, I'm not in that space. I think if V& A Dundee can, I think there's probably two things that kind of swim in my head, maybe not always in kind of parallel lanes, but if you can take ideas that are within pop culture.

And then add real rigorous research to them, and curatorial integrity to them. I think that's a route, and I think Tartan does that. And I think if you can then also take things that are maybe seen as niche, and intellectually elite, but do them in a way that's popular. I think that's where, that's where for me as a museum leader, I think we need to be, be looking at how those things kind of come together.

So no, popular culture is not something for us to be retreating from at all. Um, and in a city like Dundee, we're one of the biggest generator of games that as a cultural reform probably engage more people than lots of museums, even if you add up their visitor numbers together. And, you know, I think we, you know, why not be interested in that?

Absolutely. And obviously this is called the Radical Museums Podcast. So I wonder if you had any sort of thoughts about what radical museum work means to you? Oh, it's such a tricky question because I actually, I Because radical is one of those words you'll be in danger of overusing it, but I use it, so I'm one of them.

I actually think having a V& A in Dundee is a radical act in and of itself. Having the V& A with its roots within South Kensington, I think it was a radical act way back when, when it was looking at, you know, the role of kind of design and manufacturing and industry and the relationship with the Royal College of Art, etc.

You know, there was a lots of really interesting ideas swimming around about what does it mean to make things that are, that help people, but that also they're beautiful and use material as well. And actually, I think to then have a, the first V&A in the world in Dundee, um, outside of London is incredible.

So, actually I think within our founding DNA or founding partnerships, they created a radical act by us having here think the focus on a design museum. Of course, we engage with other disciplines because design is. everywhere. It is every day. Um, I think that is radical, but I think it's even back to that last chat we were having about ideas of kind of popular culture coming together with ideas of traditional culture, more intellectually driven academic ideas of who gets to create culture, who gets to engage with that.

I think all of those conversations are radical. I think Tartan is a radical show. I think the fact that it puts really bold political ideas side by side, I think. People's tartan shouldn't be radical, but it feels quite radical that we've got, you know, a homemade Burberry cap, which is both part of what traditionally might be called Ned culture in Scotland, close to some incredible objects from museums.

We've got a football strip and a Jimmy hat, not far from some, you know, really incredible bits of haute couture fashion. I just love all of that stuff. So the radicals, the big things that we can do around social change, whether that's. It's really thinking hard about, um, you know, the empire and our relationship to slavery and decolonization and actually looking at hidden stories like I was talking to you about our lavender labels, which I'm really, really proud of in our Scottish design galleries, which tell, you know, previously untold stories of queer culture through the, in the creation of objects that are in the design, the design galleries upstairs.

So big radical acts like that and then I think there's small everyday acts of kind of radical behaviour and I think a lot of that comes through just having a culture of care, a culture of kindness and not thinking about your, even, I retreat from the word institution but I noticed I used it the other day in a meeting.

But it's not about the institution retaining its power and its authority. It's actually how you let go of that. And for me, as a museum, I think a radical act is to think of how you convene and you bring together. And you actually back to, sorry Adele, back to the idea of how you become a community and not just work with them.

I think. All of that, all of that is great. So I guess radical is permeates the macro to the everyday micro. Um, and it's just a bit kind of moving forward and possibly sometimes being a step ahead of, you know, others in broader society with what you're doing as well as bringing everyday joy and being relevant to people.

Simon Stephens Fantastic. And obviously we've talked already about everyone's buoyed by the success of the Tartan exhibition, but I guess you're already thinking about what next. So, uh, what are the kind of sort of your future aspirations for, for the V& A Dundee and what can we expect to see come next? 

Leone Bell I mean, like everybody that's probably listening, you watch the museum sector, I guess we're trying to reconcile our endless ambition and ideas with the resource that we have.

But actually that doesn't, we're not going to ever let that stop us because we do really believe that we're, we're doing something kind of really, really unique here. Um, but so, I mean, ideas in the postcard for what could follow Tartan. to be honest, because actually it's been so good for us in that it tells this incredible international story of design and Scotland and all the meaning that comes with that.

[00:36:00] But next year we are going to be showing an exquisite V& A show that had a very short run in London on kimono. That's very special to us because it speaks to the Japanese culture that we also feel is represented through our architecture. We're also working in partnership with the V& A on something called Photocity.

Um, I slightly stumbled there because I'm just suddenly thinking what's announced and what's not. Um, and Photocity looks at actually the design innovation within photography and how in a really short space of time, photography also, um, has become a tool of how we understand and map our cities, how we engage with them.

Going forward, we're working on some really big ideas of, and partnerships with. Design museums around the world, but also just really thinking seriously about where we go from Tartan. Um, where we take Tartan ideally, but also Tartan's given us confidence to think about what can we do as V& A Dundee. And I'm a proud fan of blockbuster shows.

I think blockbusters, maybe out with London, have a different perception to them in London, but for us to be able to show things like Kimono, Ocean Liners when we opened, really big shows in our really big galleries. that demonstrate the meaning of our design culture in Scotland and internationally. It's just really exciting for us.

We're thinking about big ideas that can follow Tarten that are maybe from and of Scotland, but will always speak to a more kind of international kind of audience as well. 

Simon Stephens Amazing. Thanks so much, Leonie. That was absolutely fascinating. Finally, did you have an object that you think represents your work and, uh, your views and what you do and things like that.

Leonie Bell Am I allowed to say the building? I've probably spoken enough about the building because I suppose, and actually architects probably hate people describing buildings as objects. 

Actually, there's one that, one that I really, really love that's actually, maybe doesn't really speak or represent anything we've spoken about, but it talks about my postgraduate education.

So I did a postgrad in the history of decorative art and design and, um, one of the people that blew my mind when I Um, studying that in the nineties was a designer called Christopher Dresser, who was born in Glasgow and then moved to London and was a really young student of, um, government schools of design.

And that sounds a little bit kind of, you know, top, top down, but there's something really nice about government really understanding the value of design in those days. And so, you're talking about like the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, Christopher Dresser became known as the first industrial designer, meaning that he put his name to mass produced objects.

And because I spent so long of my, of my, my life in, my kids are Glaswegian in Glasgow, studied and worked in Glasgow for so long, we've got a bit of his glassware upstairs from the V& A collection called, um, the Clutha Vase, and Clutha's the Gaelic name for the Clyde, the river that, you know, runs through Glasgow.

And Christopher Dresser, not only becoming one of the first industrial designers, was also one of the first designers that we understand went to Japan when Japan opened up. So back to those Japanese connections that are embodied within the architecture of V& A Dundee. But he also was one of the first designs, it's a beautiful kind of golden vase that moves through different shades of yellow to burn orange and it bends over so he really also embraced the natural impurities of the glass making process rather than trying to deny them.

So you can see it when you, when we take you back upstairs and I just love actually that in that object I suppose. is, I guess, embodies my relationship through this building to Japan. To designers traveling and really learning from around the world, but also thinking about imperfection and process is something that should inform the final outcome of design and actually being really honest about that.

And I just kind of love that it's called Clutha as well and it kind of reminds me of my many happy years in Glasgow, but love that it's upstairs and if you turn the corner you've then got Charles Rennie Macintosh's oak room, which is brilliant too. So it would be Christopher Dresser's Clutha Vase.

Simon Stephens Perfect. It's a fantastic way to end the podcast. Thanks very much. 

You have been listening to the Museums Association's Radical Museums podcast. This episode was presented by me, Simon Stevens. [00:40:00] Other episodes of our podcast can be found on all the usual channels. We'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts about this podcast and what museum activism means to you. You can find out all about us and our campaigns on our website, which is www.museumsassociation.org. Thanks for listening.