School pupils around Dundee are being challenged to use their creative skills to revive one of the city's historic design traditions by making their own unique jute bale "marks".

The Jute Bag Project has been organised by Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and will see around 3,000 jute bags - donated by the Natural Bag Company - being distributed to schools to allow the pupils to get to work on designing their bale marks.

Schools will be asked to select the best three designs from their pupils, all of which will be put on display and a public vote taken to decide their favourite. A small cash award will be given.

The challenge has been laid by the college - part of the Dundee University - to coincide with the Society of Scottish Artists' Annual Exhibition, which this year is being staged in the Vision Building in Dundee, in conjunction with the College. The SSA annual exhibition is traditionally held in the Royal Scottish Academy Galleries in Edinburgh.

The SSA exhibition will run alongside the college's own annual Degree Show, which this year is also taking place in the Vision Building, from May 23 to June 6.

Professor Elaine Shemilt, chair of Fine Art Printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College, said: "Having the SSA exhibition here will be a unique event for Dundee and as part of this we are launching this educational project that we hope will prove to be a stimulating and creative process as well as acknowledging the Dundee context within its subject matter.

She added: "Since Dundee is synonymous with the jute trade, we felt it appropriate to use jute as our stimulus. The city was once famous for its jute industry and its legacy is deep rooted and still visible in all manner of ways from names of streets, parks and parts of the city to the building of grand mansions and public buildings, the expansion of the city's harbour, shipbuilding and whaling industry, and the history of many business institutions to name but a few."

Jute was transported back from India by ships in large bales, which were stamped with marks known as bale marks. The bale marks were used to identify the type and quality and the producer or seller of the raw jute.

Printed onto the side of the jute bales using a relief disc about the size of a side plate in width, the marks were generally quite simple and often geometric shapes or objects like stars or hearts.

"The aim of this project is for pupils to design their own personal bale mark which best identifies them and their personality," said Ms Shemilt. "Pupils may decide to retain the circular shape but they should feel free to explore and adapt the shape to suit their own idea, as we would love these to be as individual and creative as possible."