
Dundee could be set for a five-year celebration of culture despite missing out on the City of Culture 2017 crown.
Bid chiefs are meeting today nearly a month on from when Hull was named the title winner.
The team hope a number of the events originally planned for 2017 will still take place but spread out over several years.
The ideas generated today will be put to Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop in the new year.
Bid director Bryan Beattie, of Creative Services Scotland, said: “We drafted an outline of how we would like to take things forward over the next few years in the days after the decision was made.
“But this is the first time we’ve come together since then, to go through it and think: a few weeks down the line, is this still how we feel?
“We’ve got a meeting with the minister in the first week of the new year, because she’s still keen to explore how Dundee wants to take itself forward.
“Today will probably help focus our minds on what it is we want to take to the Scottish Government to say: here are our outline ideas what might you be able to help with?
“We want to give it a longer-term context.
“One of the lessons we took from the judges was that we were, in their terms, a wee bit too far down the road in terms of development.
“So, maybe we should be looking at a 10-year strategy on where we want to be in 10 years and how we get there over the next three to five years.
“Are there bits we intend to do that we can spread out over the next three to five years and make them happen anyway?
“I feel there’s a bit of sense in that. You maybe don’t get the festival celebration that we would have got having everything in one year, but it’s a bit more achievable.”
Mr Beattie added: “I’m very optimistic. The initial disappointment didn’t last long before people started being a bit more gung-ho and saying, ‘do you know what? Let’s see how we can make this happen anyway’.
“Everybody is coming into it very positively and we are determined to make sure all the good work is built upon.”