Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) works on a variety of projects with public and private sector partners, all with the goal of supporting the emirate’s creative population. The Authority is working with the ‘Hayi’ app, a free, local social communication network for Dubai neighborhoods that encourages residents to communicate, endorse, and befriend one another, form groups based on their locations, share common interests and preferences, and launch and participate in social initiatives and activities within their communities.
Dubai Culture hopes to develop interconnected creative neighborhoods through this collaboration by giving interactive ways for creatives in local communities to have a digital presence and providing them with a platform to improve access and reach as well as assist them.
The collaboration and partnership agreement between Dubai Culture and Hayi aims to bring together creative talents from all parts of Dubai in order to give them the opportunity to present their work and deliver creative services. It will be done in three stages: the first will be the construction of a digital ‘Al Quoz Neighborhood’ on the app, which will allow artists to showcase their work, advertise their products, and share their performances in Al Quoz and other local neighborhoods. At this time, the app will also allow Dubai Culture to distribute all notifications and updates that it desires to share with the community.
This partnership stems from Dubai Culture’s commitment to support small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups in Dubai’s creative community and facilitate the operation of their businesses, as well as provide an environment that stimulates their growth and prosperity, as one of the priorities of its strategic roadmap 2020–2026 to develop an attractive creative economy. It also arises from the Authority’s commitment to achieving the goals of the Dubai Creative Economy Strategy, which aims to make the emirate the global creative economy capital by 2025, as well as its mission to create a knowledge-based economy.