Contributing to the dream that is UAE

From the UAE’s 2021 Vision to the European Union’s ‘Creative Europe’ programme, the strength and future of a culture’s identity is recognised in its ability to boldly imagine its next steps and remain innovative. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world and all there ever will be to know and understand,” said Albert Einstein.

With a clear direction for the UAE, most recently defined by the leadership in the 2021 Vision, our country must continue to develop at a rapid rate to achieve ambitious goals. In order to foster a knowledge-based society and a highly productive economy, we must create an entrepreneurial nation driven by the imagination of the youth. The UAE’s leaders have built the framework and have opened the door. It is up to the next generation to walk through it. However, we can only inspire entrepreneurship and build a society rooted in creativity by building an appreciation around the importance to dream.

As we focus on the achievements of the past to propel us forward, boldly, confidently into the future, we must never forget the power to dream. The Late Shaikh Zayed had dreamt of a unified, modern country and by the grace of Allah, his wish has been fulfilled. Rest not on this achievement, but use it as the foundation stone to become a country of ‘what if’. My vision, my dream is of a country strong by its creators, its ideas and its spirit of ‘what can’.

As the country’s future leaders gathered for the first schools’ parliament at the Federal National Council headquarters recently in Abu Dhabi, in a ground-breaking initiative that sought to equip students with the knowledge, experience and desire to better understand the process of politics, they will begin to assess and understand what role they can play in the future. However, if they cannot creatively imagine or conceptualise what that future could be, then it will never come to fruition. The future is not something that one reaches through the inexorable movement of time and experience. It is something one achieves through evolutionary development, fuelled by the ability to dream about a better situation than the current one.

So how do we nurture the value of dreaming? How can we employ an intangible process to create a tangible future?

The simple answer is through the arts. There is a profound connection between the arts and innovation. Like innovation, arts challenge boundaries. Imagination and the ability to dream sit at the heart of both artistic expression and innovation. History teaches us that innovation rarely happens in places where the tools of culture — music, theatre, literature, art — are unavailable. Society needs both not only to survive, but to thrive.

If we invest in our ability to invent, we should equally invest in our ability to dream, to design and to create. To keep such fields of genius in separate compartments is to deny ourselves our true potential. By teaching our children to play, perform, take a chance and create, we will nurture their capacity to innovate. When their passion for physics equals their love for music; when their interest in engineering complements their fascination for art, then we will truly become the entrepreneurial nation that we seek to become.

The European Union (EU), which faces a far greater challenge to its cultural and existential identity, has recently turned to the arts to fuel creativity and strengthen its future. At the end of last year, the European Parliament and European Commission approved the ‘Creative Europe’ programme that will invest €1.46 billion (Dh5.36 billion) over the next seven years in its creative and cultural industries. In facing its greatest challenge to its cultural identity, the EU has turned to its artists and musicians, filmmakers and designers, to revitalise its future, give harmony and strengthen society.

The UAE faces its own challenges, that of its identity (built upon the nexus of tradition and modernity). The answer is held in the hands of our youth and their ability to dream a future that is both diversified and competitive in nature and entrepreneurial and innovative in spirit. The only way they will truly reach the ambitious goals set by our country’s leadership is through exposure to artistic expression and the arts placed as a fundamental component within society — an identity inclusive of all who live here, who contribute in their own ways to the dream that is the UAE.

Personally, I envisioned a wonderful arts festival that would become the crossroads of artistic expression and societal development; a beautiful bridge between art and technology; to become a pivotal point of creativity and industry. Channelling the best local and international talent to the forefront of UAE public thought, I sought to create an integrated, grass-roots experience for the communities of the UAE. Next month, the Abu Dhabi Festival 2014 will hold more than 100 community and education events, while sharing with the UAE performances by international artists including Herbie Hancock and Renee Fleming. I am living my dream. My wish is that today’s youth will be able to do the same tomorrow.

Hoda I. Al Khamis-Kanoo is the founder of Abu Dhabi Festival.