12 Highlights from 2024 with Dundee Heritage Trust

As custodians of two of Scotland’s best-loved museums, every year brings new excitement at Dundee Heritage Trust, and more opportunities to spark curiosity as we share our inspiring polar and jute collections with thousands of people from around the world; whether at our top-rated museums, through our award-winning education programme, or online.

2024 was no exception.

With the beginning of a major new restoration project aboard the RRS Discovery, a fun-filled school in residence programme at Verdant Works Museum, the unveiling of a refreshed Dundee Heritage Trust website, and the welcoming of over 3,500 young learners to our sites, it was a year packed with inspiration, education and enlightenment.

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at 12 of our highlights from 2024.

Thank you to each and every one of our visitors, supporters, collaborators, volunteers and team, who allow us to continue to engage thousands of curious minds with the Royal Research Ship Discovery and its extraordinary legacy, and the amazing stories of Dundee’s industrial past at Verdant Works Museum. Discover the difference your support could make today.

In January 2024, Dundee Heritage Trust offered free entry to Discovery Point and Verdant Works Museum for the people of Dundee. Whether a frequent visitor or first time explorer, Dundee residents were invited to the Trust’s museums free of charge from 3rd-31st January 2024. The initiative, introduced by way of thanking the city for its continued support and to ensure that heritage is accessible to all, saw over 12,000 local residents come through the doors of Discovery Point, walk the gangway onto RRS Discovery, and wander through the green gates of Verdant Works Museum.

And, we’ve just announced another special offer for Dundee residents in January 2025; find out more here!

With thanks to the National Heritage Memorial Fund, February 2024 marked the beginning of a huge milestone in the ongoing conservation of the RRS Discovery; the magnificent wooden ship built in Dundee in 1901 for Captain Scott’s pioneering Antarctic Expedition.

Undertaken by Scottish heritage engineers, JPS Restoration, the urgent works address the ship’s stern and decks. The ship has remained open during the works, and continues to do so, as the project progresses into 2025. The works present not only an opportunity to secure the future of this extraordinary historic ship, but the chance to see the RRS Discovery up close as you’ve never seen it before; with elements of the ship’s construction exposed that have remained unseen by the public for decades.

Dive deeper into RRS Discovery‘s conservation project here.

Tuberculosis is often mistaken as a disease of the past, commonly found amongst mill workers. Our second major exhibition of 2023/24 at Verdant Works Museum, Tackling TB: Dundee Scientists Fighting the Killer Cough (created in collaboration with the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the University of Dundee) raised awareness of the vital work being undertaken in Dundee labs today as part of the ongoing global effort to develop better treatments for this deadly disease. 

Through real stories – including an intriguing court case that stemmed from within Dundee’s tallest tenement – interactive elements, talks, outreach, and our first school-in-residence programme here at Verdant Works Museum, audiences of all ages and backgrounds were educated and inspired.

We worked with our collaborators at the University of Dundee to bring talks by leading respiratory scientists, a museum late event celebrating women in science, an escape room, childrens’ workshops, and more! We also created a huge snakes and ladders game in our High Mill, with hand-painted scientist skittles as play-markers – a first for a Dundee jute mill?

Combining three websites, hundreds of hours of creativity and coding to enhance our online accessibility, sustainability and user-friendliness, the new Dundee Heritage Trust website was launched in March 2024.

After almost a year of collaborating with Allegro Creative Agency, we collated our existing (separate) websites for the Trust, Discovery Point and Verdant Works Museum into one new, user-friendly site.

The new website allows the Trust to share the amazing stories from both museums to a global audience in innovative ways, as well as reducing our digital footprint, and putting accessibility at the forefront; with greater ease of translation services, audio and visual accessibility, and more.

Our new website has been visited over 100,000 times since its launch.

In another collaboration with Allegro Creative Agency – while bringing in the expertise of Authentic Communications, as well as dozens of local voices and more – Verdant Works Museum underwent a rebrand.

With a mill that has been at the heart of Dundee for almost 200 years, it is most certainly a case of evolution not revolution – we are proud custodians of the spectacular mill, of our Recognised Collections and of the hundreds of inspiring stories at Verdant Works. Over a number of months, we conducted interviews and research with current and potential visitors and supporters, as well as engaging our fantastic colleagues and volunteers and partners across the area, to ensure we had the best possible picture of what was important to them.

We wanted to adapt around the evolving cultural and digital landscape, but also stay true to the heritage and identity of the Verdant Works mill itself.

Verdant Works Museum: The Fabric of Dundee was revealed in March 2024. For the final touches, we were delighted to introduce Barry Robertson of Robertsign to the project. A second generation Dundee signwriter, Barry’s connections to the city’s heritage, passion and precision came to the fore as our iconic green gates were painted with the new Verdant Works Museum logo. Watch the gates being painted here.

To measure and record every part of the RRS Discovery would take hundreds of hours. This year, however, it was done in less than a week, with thanks to the wonders of 3D scanning technology!

As part of a wider a project coined Tales of Discovery, our friends at the University of Southampton used state-of-the-art technology to create a highly accurate 3D representation of the entire ship, delivering exciting new insights into how the ship was built and used, and informing vital restoration work on the vessel.

Laser scanners allowed the team to precisely capture the shape, dimensions, and details of the ship. This was supplemented with LiDAR and photogrammetry surveys, resulting in the creation of a highly accurate 3D representation of the entire ship, both inside and outside.

LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, involves sending out laser pulses and measuring the time it takes for those pulses to bounce back from surrounding objects. This data is then used to create precise three-dimensional maps of the surveyed area.

Photogrammetry involves analysing overlapping images of a subject taken from different angles to deduce the size, shape, and position of objects within the images.

The technology plotted around 1,000,000 points on the ship during a 2-minute scan!

In the springtime of 2024, the Hope Cross, constructed in 1922 by Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Quest crew members following his untimely passing, travelled over 7,000 miles from South Georgia as part of a collaboration between Dundee Heritage Trust (DHT), South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT), the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (GSGSSI), and with thanks to British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Earlier this year, SGHT approached DHT and proposed the Cross’s display and care at Discovery Point in Dundee alongside Shackleton’s first Antarctic ship, the RRS Discovery, in order that the Cross be shown in an accessible place for the public to view whilst being expertly cared for. The exhibition in Dundee also contributes to the GSGSSI’s aim that the public benefit from heritage objects on South Georgia and they be brought to a wider audience; not just those visiting South Georgia.

Visitors to Discovery Point can now view the original Hope Cross, overlooking the RRS Discovery, to pay their respects to Sir Ernest Shackleton; one of the world’s most famous explorers, aptly named ‘The Boss’. It will be on show and cared for at Discovery Point on long-term loan from South Georgia Museum, on behalf of the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, who are custodians of the historic artefact.

Thank you to all of our collaborators and generous donors who assisted in bringing the Hope Cross to Dundee.

On a dark winters evening, close to 1,000 visitors gathered in Dundee’s Caird Hall – a venue with close ties to Shackleton’s famous Endurance story – for ‘A Festival of Shackleton’; a once-in-a-generation bringing together of Shackleton experts, explorers and historians from around the globe.

Produced in collaboration with our friends at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, the evening included over two hours of talks, presentations and videos on all things Shackleton. From the discovery of the Endurance shipwreck, to preserving The Boss’ Quest cabin, to examining his time spent in Dundee – running unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament! – stories played out many of Shackleton’s adventures and voyages.

It was a pleasure to bring an event of such scale and importance in the ongoing legacy of polar exploration to Dundee. Thank you to our collaborators and supporters, without whom the festival would not have been possible.

And there we have it! An extraordinary year wrapped up in 12 special highlights.

Be sure to join us on our next great adventures in 2025; celebrating 100 years since Discovery was designated the UK’s very first Royal Research Ship.

Dundee Heritage Trust is an independent charity. We generate over 98% of our income through museum ticket sales, fundraising and hospitality. Your support is vital in ensuring that we can continue to preserve and portray Dundee’s rich heritage in ways that educate, inspire and enlighten.