Pupil's monumental trip to Dubai

Eddie Hunt will visit the park where the finished monument will be placed

A schoolboy is preparing to head to Dubai with a scale model of his competition-winning design for a monument dedicated to Dundee.

The sculpture, conceived by Eddie Hunt, 14, will feature Dundee Law, the rail bridge and the Tay.

The full-size 4m creation will later be placed in Za'abeel Park in Dubai, which is a sister city to Dundee.

It will feature alongside models representing places such as Geneva, Istanbul, Shanghai and Osaka.

Eddie, who is a pupil at Morgan Academy, will head to Dubai at the weekend.

The trip was part of his prize for beating almost 100 others to win the design competition.

He said: "It should be good. I'm going to the park that it [the monument] is getting built in and taking pictures.

They know it's quite a big achievement so they're excited Eddie Hunt

"I'll probably get pictures of all the hotels and buildings and stuff, so I can bring them back and show people.

"And I'm going to go back once it's built."

Eddie admitted his family was massively proud of his win.

"They're more excited than me," he said.

"They know it's quite a big achievement so they're excited."

Given the task of turning Eddie's design into a reality was Angus-based sculptor Doug Cocker.

He said: "What you've got is a truncated column, which is stepped up like at ziggurat and that's a kind of modified version of the Law hill.

"Projecting out from that you've got a kind of curved wall, except it's punctured with arches, so it resonates of the Tay Bridge as it comes into Dundee.

"You could maybe say it's a bit more severe than the drawing, but I think it's maintained the spirit of the drawing and certainly the aspects of the drawing that Eddie had as a key part of his design."

The finished monument will be made out of granite and will be about 4m high and 4m across.

Mr Cocker hopes they can convince officials in Dubai to have the monument built in Scotland and then transferred over there, so it can be a true representation of Dundee.