The great Renaissance artist and sculptor Michelangelo died having amassed a fortune of around 50,000 ducats, or $35 million in today’s world. Putting his genius to aside, he not only had a chisel for a fine nose, he had a nose for a fine patron, from the Medici bankers to a Pope or two.
Creative talent will always migrate to opportunity. In the 1500s, it was Florence and Venice, followed in successive centuries by Amsterdam and London, then New York in the 1950s. Indeed, the city’s foremost ‘ideapreneur’ Andy Warhol commented: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.”
Now Dubai has made its bid to be the next big talent magnet with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, setting a target to more than double the number of creative professionals here from 70,000 to 150,000 over the next five years.
At a time when creative enterprise globally has been throttled, this initiative could not have been better timed. In the UK alone, Oxford Economics has predicted the loss of 409,000 jobs in creative industries such as film, design, performing arts and advertising post-coronavirus. Where should these highly trained, highly motivated, world-class creative people go?
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has suggested they retrain. A first violinist, however, does not necessarily make a happy burger-flipper. Dubai offers another option with open arms that will feed their ambition and give them another resource that appears to be in short supply elsewhere –optimism.
Besides, with the target of growing the creative sector to 5 percent of the economy in five years, Dubai has recognized what a massive multiplier effect innovation has to GDP. Before 2019, creative industries were growing at five times the rate of the UK economy, contributing a massive £111.7 billion – more than the automotive, aerospace, life sciences and oil and gas industries combined.
Every major creative hub as a go-to district. New York has its Soho and Tribeca. London has its Shoreditch. But in Dubai, where do you start? Still unknown by too many locals, Dubai has its own creative production district in Al Quoz. This week Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum laid out his vision to make it “the first destination for creators from all over the world.”
As we say in the creative business, where there’s a will…a warehouse…and good Wi-Fi…there’s a way – particularly with the liberalization of freelance visas for non-residents.
How will history see the emergence of Dubai as an international creative hub? This region has always been the centre of trade routes between East and West, from silks and spices to petroleum. In today’s knowledge economy, the most valuable trade anyone makes is in ideas. Why not be the place where ideas turn into reality?
Mark Fiddes, Consulting Creative Director
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