V&A Dundee ‘seek + peek!’ trail
I was commissioned by V&A Dundee in 2021, to create ‘seek + peek!’, a playful waterfront trail, to encourage outdoor play in the area surrounding the museum.
The trail map has inspired and assisted thousands of waterfront family adventures, and continues to be free to pick up from a little cart at the entrance to the museum, where your play adventure will begin. In each location, the reader is encouraged to find things, imagine, create and play with activities and prompts.
Welcome to V&A Dundee! This free seek + peek! playful trail is designed to take your family on a waterfront wander around our plaza, the urban beach and gardens.
Share your adventure with the world! @VADundee
Find more information about the trail here!
Photos taken by Julie Howden
map
One side of the seek + peek trail features a playful map, incorporating different elements of the Dundee landscape, including an abstract form of the skyline, landmarks including the Caird Hall and Slessor Gardens, and V&A Dundee.
The activities encourage families to look closer as they explore the waterfront setting, counting windows, spotting patterns, imagining where they might sail to and looking across the Tay.
It also acts as a bright and eye catching poster visitors can take away as a souvenir of their time in Dundee and V&A Dundee.
Can you spot the secret seal?
activities
The activities in the trail are focussed on three different locations - outside V&A Dundee, at the waterfront and in Slessor Gardens.
Outside the museum, families are encouraged to design a way to travel through the tunnel playfully, look to see how the weather is today, and things to spot include V&A Dundee’s resident ducks and seagulls.
At the waterfront, families are encouraged to play in the sand of the Urban Beach, look out over the water and imagine a new way to cross it, and find different sea creatures.
In Slessor Gardens, there is a scavenger hunt to find something noisy, to sit on, flying, tall, see through, smelly and small, before being prompted to create a shape of the museum on the grass with your family.
cart
In 2025, I worked alongside V&A Dundee to refresh the trail to change fonts and logos. To celebrate, V&A Dundee also commissioned a new design on the play cart which contains the trail leaflets.
I worked with Families Coordinator, Tracey Smith, to develop a new design for the cart, featuring words and illustrations from the trail, and colour matching paint to the leaflet too.
