The Culture and Arts Authority in Dubai, in cooperation with the Art Dubai Group, launched the Dubai Ideas Marathon to support the creative community in Dubai. The initiative, through an open invitation to proposals, aimed to attract ideas that would meet the current challenges facing the creative and cultural communities in Corona virus continued to spread.

The seventh and eighth days of this month witnessed a series of electronic workshops, which brought together a number of international and local experts from various fields, to work together with a view to reaching potential solutions to these challenges.

The initiative was born on March 22, when a number of workshops were held electronically, which brought together 70 members of the cultural community, from small companies and independent practitioners, to define the main challenges facing creative societies.

On March 31, I launched an open invitation to participate in the Dubai Ideas Marathon, and to submit proposals that provide solutions to these challenges. The initiative was very popular to attract - within just three days of its launch - 320 posts, followed by the selection of more than 100 people, to help find solutions, through the workshops, on the seventh and eighth of April.

The Director General of the Culture and Arts Authority in Dubai (Dubai Culture), Hala Badri, expressed her pride in the results of the initiative, stressing its importance in monitoring possible solutions to the challenges facing the cultural sector in the Emirates.

She said that «(the initiative) presented a unique model for the spirit of responsibility and positivity, and the values ​​of cooperation and mutual support, which were most vividly manifested in the contributions of all institutions and individuals of the creative and cultural community in the UAE.

Badri added that “(the initiative) will open broad horizons for us in the coming stage, to reach potential solutions that can be implemented to support the creative and cultural societies in the country, to face the challenges they face under the current crisis, and allow us to assume our shared responsibility in supporting them.”

The artist and professor of fine arts, Buff Shimansky, praised the initiative and the level of participation, stressing that "the Dubai Ideas Marathon succeeded in uniting the efforts of a wide spectrum of creators, from all over the world, amid a crisis that everyone is going through."