Darryl Gaffney du Plooy - I would never call myself a creative

Darryl comes from a background in social care and community engagement through many different jobs and projects that we chat about on the project but he’s currently working on researching and developing a local currency for Dundee. ‘I would never call myself a creative’ Pretty much the first thing Darryl says. Not the best start, given the name of the podcast but ‘creative’ and 'design' have never been in the vocabulary in the work that he has done. Although we talk about how many of the roles he’s been in have utilised design principles, methodologies and approaches. Darryl talks about his introduction to Service Design and how something really clicked and made him realise that those things he was doing all along were part of a bigger picture. Similarly, co-design has had a big impact on the work that he does. From our chat, it’s clear that Darryl likes to throw himself into challenges and bring people together to create change. In 2017 he 2017 stood in the local elections as an independent candidate. His campaign was based on the basis that ‘local people should be more involved in local decision making’. In the episode, he talks about shaping his doorstep manner and trying to make genuine connections with people. He clearly did something right as he finished ahead of the Lib Dems and several other candidates for Dundee East. With his current work on a local currency Darryl has started to make more connections with the Dundee creative community and from his previous jobs and projects finds himself in an interesting position. He can see the crossover of the needs of both groups but there is a distinct lack of connections. He wants to act as a bridge to that gap to help make a difference. He’s also just launched a new podcast looking at events of the past in Dundee and seeing how they’re relevant now and what that means for the future. You should definitely give the first episode a listen and find out more about how Winston Churchill lost his seat in Dundee. Emerging Dundee Podcast - https://soundcloud.com/emerging-dundee-102375827 Darryl’s twitter - https://twitter.com/DDuplooy