Dubai’s initiative to boost the city’s creative industry, and have its contribution to GDP grow from 2.5 percent to 5 percent within the next five years, is already bearing fruit with an increasing number of designers looking to set up their business in the city.
This year’s edition of the Global Grad Show, an initiative by Art Dubai, received applications from graduates from 464 universities, a 70 percent increase from last year, from 70 countries around the world.
“What is particularly interesting about Dubai and the opportunities here is the government’s vision for the creative field. The announcements about 5 percent of the GDP being allocated to the creative fields is a massive step towards building that ecosystem ground-up,” said Tadeu Baldani, director of Global Grad Show.
“If you’re a designer, anywhere in the world, and you’re looking for a place where your vision is aligned with public policies, funding and business environment, Dubai, of course, becomes a highly attractive place for you to think about,” he continued.
Now in its seventh edition, Global Grad Show is a programme for international academic talent, bringing their innovations to a worldwide audiences and supporting their development towards real-world implementation.
“The Global Grad Show is a good reflection of that because the growth in the number of applications we’ve received this year represents the understanding that a Dubai-based initiative is providing opportunities for creatives, engineers and scientists to develop their start-ups. Our growth is a reflection of how Dubai has become more attractive for start-ups altogether,” said Baldani.
Launched by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in April, the initiative to boost the creative economy will see the number of jobs in the industry rise to 150,000 – from 70,000 – within five years. The number of firms is set to rise from 8,000 to 15,000 over the same time period.
The creative economy covers a wide range of subjects including publishing, writing, audio-visual and print media such as cinema, music and video, as well as artistic and cultural industries, cultural heritage museums, historical sites, archives, events, libraries and the software and videogame sector.
Tadeu Baldani, director of Global Grad Show.
“The most exciting innovations sit at the intersection of more than one discipline. What we see at the Global Grad Show is that when engineers, architects and data scientists sit together, quite literally, studying the same things and doing the same degree, the quality and the depth of the innovation is significantly higher,” explained Baldani.
“By being a place where these intersections and crossroads happen so frequently, I think Dubai can be a very fertile place for more of these ideas to happen and grow from here,” he added.
Dubai’s commercial interior design industry is experiencing a post-coronavirus boom, said Mette Degn-Christensen, director, Dubai Design Week, which will commence on November 7.
“Post lockdown, a lot of building projects, both in the residential and hospitality property markets, which had been stalling were fast-tracked across the whole region, but especially in Dubai. UAE is a bit of a bridge into the wider region so a lot of offices are set up here, but they’re working on projects in Doha, Kuwait, Egypt etc.,” Christensen explained.
Mette Degn-Christensen, director, Dubai Design Week.
“When it comes to the residential property market, we’ve all spent a year at home and maybe realised that it’s about time that we renovate our homes so we were seeing a huge growth in demand from consumers themselves,” she continued.
Christensen said the non-commercial sector of design is also growing with more industries realising that design is a solution and that “creativity is so important in these moments where things are flipped upside down, and we have a pandemic, and we need to figure out how we do things”.
“Dubai Design Week has a schedule packed with activities, events, pop-ups and installations for all visitors of all levels of experience of all ages,” summarised Christensen.
Some of the highlights include a commercial design fair with over 150 exhibiting brands and hands-on activities that are “human-centric”, she said.
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