How corporate support boosted Dubai’s arts

It’s not an add-on to a hotel; it’s not just a little something you can do. We’re going to be a centre for excellence,” promises Damian Calderbank, Artistic Director at the Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre (Ductac).

Calderbank can say that again. While residents of Dubai enjoy easy access to services in information technology, media, sports, tourism, and shopping, the one area that has been lacking progress for a while has been the arts. Although art enthusiasts could spend a few hours hopping from one gallery to another across the city, it still lacked a properly-equipped centre for both fine and performance arts. The not-for-profit arts facility, however, had to go a long way before its official opening in November 2006.

“Around five or six years ago, our deputy chairman Brian Wilkie, thought of building a proper centre for Dubai. He got together with different business councils: the British Business Group, the Indian business council and the embassies. Both councils got their business communities together to help build the city,” says Deepak Rego, director of Events and Communication at Ductac.

A committee was formed including a number of businesspeople as well as a few artists. Representatives from various groups such as the Indian Theatre Group, Dubai Drama Club, and top business figures from the National Bank of Dubai, Ernst and Young, and Emirates Financial Services took part in the project.

“We had business brains and artistic brains and all of them put their minds together to make this project a huge success,” says Rego.

This was followed by a fund-raising event in May of 2004 at the British Consulate. The initiative raised US$54,500 by selling David Beckham-signed T-shirts, a UK comedian performing and an art auction. The following day, a number of Indian and British businessmen made huge monetary commitments to the project after which others followed. Corporate support has been the backbone of the establishment with companies like Al Futtaim, Bin Dasmal Group, Shell, MAF Investments, ABN Amro Bank, Emirates and many others contributing funds.

When it was time to find an appropriate location, several options in Dubai were considered but dropped for one reason or another. Finally, Majid Al Futtaim Group intervened after hearing about the project.

“They said: ‘It’s a wonderful idea. We are building the Mall of the Emirates which will be in the heart of new Dubai, and we will offer you the land’. We said ‘thanks but construction costs are very high’. They said: ‘We will build the structure for you at our costs.’ But we thought the rent would be very high and they said: ‘There’ll be no rent payment for the next 30 years’. Then the contract was signed for a nominal US$2,725 a year,” Rego says.

Rego explains the pitch they went with was ‘giving back to community’. He adds that most business people residing in Dubai come from other countries, in which art gets more support and projects related to art always get tax write-offs - however there are no taxes in Dubai, and this was the right time to contribute to a social project. The group has also established a patronage scheme where companies are invited to buy a seat in the theatre for life.