Dubai Culture’s Makers Month, last seen in May, is back with the ambition of “an initiative aimed at bringing together all makers, creative talent, and entrepreneurs under one umbrella to develop their skills, artistic capabilities, and various abilities … The event also seeks to strengthen connections and networks among manufacturers and showcase the best global practices in supporting cultural and creative industries”.
That’s a lofty and ambitious set of aims for what is something of a patchwork of presentations, workshops and talks spread across 7 and 8 September (so not exactly a month). The sessions are a slightly odd mix of the very practical (licence applications, creative grants, Dubai Culture’s competitions) and very specific (3D printing for public art, a ceramic painting workshop) plus several opportunities for Make Works UAE to explain itself and promote its services – Make Works is a Tashkeel initiative which is trying to build a community of manufacturers, fabricators and suppliers who could be approached for artwork production, limited editions or prototypes. Also prominent is Colab, a digital materials library that majors on innovative materials, especially those developed locally.
It may be that the networking aspects of the event will be most beneficial in the long run, but in any case it’s likely that a creative entrepreneur will find value in at least some of the sessions.
Here’s the schedule – note that all events have to be booked separately via the links here. The venue is the LoLo House on 28th Street in Al Quoz (home to a café and co-working spaces as well as meeting rooms).
- 13:00 – 14:30 Presentation Make Works UAE – the Manufacturing Exchange: Session 1
- 14:30 – 15:00 Presentation Year-Round artistic opportunities – a guide to Dubai Culture’s projects and competitions
- 15:30 – 16:00 Presentation RETHINK: Material development in the UAE Richard Wilson, Creative Director and Founder of Colab, on locally developed materials and options for designers to use them
- 16:30 – 17:00 Presentation Art Jameel creative grants Khaled Shalkha and Sara Abufarha, the eco-architect-couple responsible for developing Datecrete, a concrete alternative that uses by-product date stones (not sure of their relevance to creative grants, but that’s what the press release says. Anyhow, they’re interesting per se: and that’s an example of Datecrete in use at the top of the page)
- 10:00 – 10:30 Presentation Empowering creativity: demystifying licence applications for the creative community in the UAE Jassim Abdulrahman Al Awadhi, Dept of Economy and Tourism
- 10:30 – 12:00 Presentation Make Works UAE – the Manufacturing Exchange: Session 2
- 12:45 – 13:15 Panel Exploring possibilities of 3D printing in public art Neda Salmanpour and Caesar Binchy of Binchy and Binchy Architecture, one of the top boutique design studios in the Middle East
- 13:15 – 13:45 Panel discussion with local material innovators – led by Richard Wilson, we think
- 14:00 – 15:00 Workshop Painting on Ceramics hosted by Al Jalila Cultural Centre for Children
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