Listening brief · Dundee Baby: Return to Source · August 2026
Should Dundee choose the next Dundee Baby?
More than sixty years after San Tropat appeared on Dundee-branded nursery products, he is returning with a real archive and an unusual question.
No search or programme has been launched. These conversations are intended to learn whether Dundee sees a useful role for the idea—and what form, if any, it should take.
Listening in Dundee · 14–16 September 2026
No preparation, endorsement or commitment requested.
Distribution
Dundee City Council, Dundee BID, Dundee & Angus Chamber of Commerce, the Dundee Partnership, cultural and educational institutions, community organisations, businesses, funders and prospective delivery partners.
Executive summary
A new Dundee Baby for a new Dundee
More than sixty years ago, an American infant appeared on Dundee-branded nursery products. That model matured into the artist and performer San Tropat and is now under consideration for transfer to Dundee Mills’ proposed Grown-Up Products Division.
His transfer creates a vacancy. In a revised Notice of Maturity, Dundee Mills’ Alistair Drysdale, Director of Model Continuity, charges San Tropat with returning to Dundee, Scotland, to find the new Dundee Baby.
The search is the public invitation into a wider creative programme. It can engage young people, families, grandparents, former mill families, students, artists and local businesses while directing attention toward Dundee’s people, places and work already under way.
Dundee Baby is proposed as a creative participation and communications platform. It is not a competing strategy, a new governance body or a claim to expertise already present in Dundee.
Operating purpose
- Help Dundee organisations bring new audiences into work already under way;
- Create paid commissions and participation for Dundee residents;
- Produce reusable digital content, images and visitor experiences;
- Direct attention and footfall toward Dundee places, businesses and institutions;
- Create a distinctive route for younger people and families to take part in the city’s story;
- Examine, only with qualified partners and evidence, whether a useful Dundee-linked product should proceed; and
- Publish what happened, who benefited, what was learned and what should happen next.
The project should begin by listening to Dundee partners and identifying a small number of places where its creative machinery can be genuinely useful. It should earn a role through delivery rather than ask Dundee to endorse a large new idea in advance.
The governing idea
Succession puts Dundee people at the centre
San Tropat’s story supplies historical continuity, an experienced creative lead and an immediately unusual image. Asking him to find the new Dundee Baby makes the idea larger than one person. He is not arriving to become Dundee’s hero, but to identify, encourage and hand attention to Dundee people.
The search can
- Give younger Dundonians a visible place in a project otherwise rooted in industrial and corporate history;
- Invite parents, carers and grandparents into Dundee’s cultural and civic story;
- Connect older residents’ mill memories with a new generation;
- Provide a natural role for schools, colleges, youth groups, family attractions and community organisations, subject to their interest and safeguarding requirements;
- Generate portraits, short films, interviews, music, illustration, design and live activity by Dundee creatives; and
- Create a city-wide story that can move through neighbourhoods and city-centre businesses.
The proposition
An arm’s-length public inquiry and creative platform
Dundee Baby operates as an arm’s-length public inquiry commissioned by Dundee Mills under its Return to Source programme. Dundee Mills states the corporate position. Dundee Baby invites Dundee to examine it, correct it and decide whether anything useful can be made from it.
A compelling public story
The original Dundee Baby, now an adult, returns to find a Dundee successor.
A participation mechanism
Residents contribute memories, ideas, corrections, creative work, nominations and local knowledge.
A commissioning platform
Dundee artists, performers, historians, photographers, guides, producers, designers and young creatives can be paid to make the work.
A visitor and city-centre layer
Stories become walks, appearances, exhibitions, events, business features and shareable content.
An evidence process
Results are reported openly, including expenditure, participation, reach, local benefit and unresolved questions.
A separate product study
A possible Dundee-linked grown-up personal-care product remains a hypothesis until technical, user, regulatory and commercial evidence supports it.
Updated August 2026
