An innovative new Millennium Products exhibition is coming to Glasgow as part of a world tour showcasing the very best of British creativity, innovation and design.

The exhibition will visit The Lighthouse in Glasgow, itself a Millennium Product, from 18 April - 7 May 2000. This former home of the Herald newspaper designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh was refurbished and opened last year as Scotland’s first dedicated design and architecture centre. One of its first major events was the announcement of the fourth tranche of Millennium Products.

The exhibition, a joint venture between the UK’s Design Council and The British Council, has already been displayed in Warsaw, Poland, where it attracted over 20,000 visitors.

After Glasgow, the exhibition will move on to venues all over the world in countries including France, Hungary, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile.

Created by Conran Design Group, the highly interactive exhibition features:

• 91 actual Millennium Products
  
• 14 specially developed three-dimensional films
  
• 8 CD ROMs
  
• 24 videos telling compelling stories about the innovations behind Millennium Products
  

Launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997, the Millennium Products initiative involved teams of judges sifting through thousands of products and services to decide which were the most creative, most pioneering new innovations to be produced in the UK at the end of the last millennium.

Over 1,000 were selected and have already toured other parts of the world in a previous Millennium Products exhibition, spreading the message of British creativity and design in countries such as China, India and Singapore.

This new exhibition tells the stories behind the extraordinary collection of Millennium Products by demonstrating how they serve some of our most basic human needs.

And it tells some remarkable stories of invention and innovation, such as:

• the shoes made for cows to help heal their diseased hooves;
  
• the tide-operated water wheel which produces cleaner, juicier oysters;
  
• the pencil made from recycled plastic vending cups;
  
• the sterile maggots which have dramatically improved the cleaning and healing of human wounds;
  
• the ground-breaking BBC programme which brought dinosaurs to life;
  
• the acoustic barrier which protects fish from being trapped in man-made underwater obstacles.
  

Chief Executive of the Design Council, Andrew Summers, said: ‘Our Millennium Products exhibition is a real celebration of the ingenuity, inventiveness and sheer diversity of British creativity today. It has already attracted enthusiastic crowds and excellent reviews elsewhere in Poland. I am confident it will now do the same in one of the world’s great creative cities - Glasgow.’

ends

Notes to editors
1. For further information and pictures contact Nell Cozens at the Design Council 0171 420 5273/mobile 07803 945260/nellc@design-council.org.uk or visit www.design-council.org.uk.