All Day

Art With Disabilities: From Frida Kahlo to Stevie Wonder – 11 Amazing Stories of People Who Changed the World

kanvas Dubai Unit 1, Al Khayat Art Avenue, 19th Street Al Quoz 1, Dubai

An exhibition created by the Bulgarian immersive-experience specialists Poliforma, using surround-sound and surround-visuals to celebrate "stories of people who have overcome, adapted, or ignored their limitations" through "captivating video inserts, stunning 3D projections, and four interactive installations". Apparently it's "a [... more]

AED 99

Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF)

Expo Centre Sharjah Sharjah

The 43nd edition of SIBF promises to be the fair’s biggest edition ever, claiming to show more than 1.5 million titles by 2,500 publishing houses from 112 different countries. There will also be a packed 12-day agenda of more than [... more]

Free

DIFC Art Nights

DIFC Gate Village Dubai

Nine days of “artistic celebration and cultural engagement” (7-15 November) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of DIFC, apparently with public art installations, panel talks, performances, live art, workshops for kids, and musical entertainment. The website doesn’t currently have much information [... more]

Free

Urban Market Festival

Manarat al Saadiyat Abu Dhabi

Originally launched in Dubai in 2021 to promote sustainable thrift shopping, this event arrives in Abu Dhabi with a makeover and what looks like a more commercial bent – the 40+ vendors do include thrift and vintage fashion, but there’s [... more]

AED 25

CLOSING TODAY Armin Najib: -continuum

Aisha Alabbar Gallery Warehouse C19, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

Najib is a multidisciplinary artist from Iran whose practice includes painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and art jewellery but primarily revolves around kinetic mechanisms and magnetic fields. His fascination with magnetism, ergonomic placement elements, and environmental sensing has led him to [... more]

Free

Fictional Landscapes

Foundry Downtown Boulevard Crescent, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard, Dubai

A group exhibition featuring 28 women artists from the UAE, Russia, Iran, Armenia, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Iceland, USA and more. These artists, who live and work across the globe, look at landscapes — urban, imagined, natural and artificial [... more]

Free

Awodiya Toluwani: The Becoming

Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery 796 Jumeirah Street, Dubai

Toluwani's fourth exhibition with the gallery (and his second in Dubai) looks at marriage in his native Nigeria. It provides insights into several marital practices observed across different local cultures and analyses prospects for the institution. To 7 January. Right: [... more]

Free
Ongoing

Meeting Mozart

Cultural Foundation Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum Street, Abu Dhabi

This acclaimed interactive experience for the young has been a major success for Sydney Opera House; it’s a 40-minute show aimed at children aged 2 to 10 (and their families) which blends live music, storytelling, and song to introduce young [... more]

From AED 120

L’ÉCOLE Middle East: Public Open Day

L'ÉCOLE Middle East, School of Jewelry Arts Building 10, Dubai Design District, Dubai

A Public Open Day at L’ÉCOLE Middle East, School of Jewelry Arts as part of Dubai Design Week. Expect tasters and demonstrations of the jewellery and gemstone courses, kids workshops, guided tours and other activities – and the new exhibition [... more]

Move on Screen: Short Films UAE

Alliance Française Dubai Dubai

A programme of dance-related shorts in the Move on Screen programme. The 24 films include 10 produced by students of the Sharjah Performing Art Academy; the remainder are by local filmmakers and artists.

Free, but pre-register

Gallant Indies | Les Indes galantes: dir Philippe Béziat (2021)

Alliance Française Dubai Dubai

On the stage of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, 30 dancers from non-traditional genres – hip-hop, krump, break, voguing – reprise and remix Jean-Philippe Rameau's baroque 1735 masterpiece, Les Indes galantes. It’s an opera offensive to modern sensibilities that reflected [... more]

Free

Rise | En Corps: dir Cédric Klapisch (2021)

Alliance Française Dubai Dubai

Élise (played by real-life Paris Opera Ballet principal ballerina Marion Barbeau in her first film rôle) thought she had the perfect life: an ideal boyfriend and a promising career as a ballet dancer. It all falls apart the day she [... more]

Free

Steinway Concert Series: Illia Ovcharenko

Dubai Opera Studio Downtown Dubai, Dubai

The young Ukrainian pianist Illia Ovcharenko is something of a must-see, especially when he's playing the Romantic repertoire – and most especially for his treatment of Liszt. Praised as “technically flawless and impeccably musical” (International Piano) and winner of multiple [... more]

AED 220

Blackadder Goes Forth

The Junction Unit H72, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

The second and final performance by Dubai Drama Group of this  stage adaptation of the fourth (and best-scripted) of the BBC sitcom – a series of schemes by Captain Edmund Blackadder to escape the horrors of World War One, aided [... more]

AED 125

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige: The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia

Bait Gholoum Ibrahim Al Issa Corniche Street, Sharjah

The Nahr al Bared refugee camp was built in north Lebanon in 1948 for Palestinian families fleeing the Nakba. At the time, nobody considered the possibility that they might still be there 75 years later. In 2007, fighting erupted in [... more]

Free, but pre-register