I was recently invited to a cultural event which promised to share the highlights of Dubai’s hidden gems through local art. Intrigued, I accepted the invitation to Tiger CO-LAB‘s launch event and turned up at the J+A Gallery in Al Quoz for an evening dedicated to the celebration of Al Satwa.

I’m no stranger to this long-standing neighbourhood of Dubai, indeed I have been a loyal customer of Al Aryam tailors for nearly ten years now, and have taken many visitors up and down the Satwa streets to delve into treasure troves of buttons, buckles and beads, and refuel at the justifiably famed Ravi’s Pakistani restaurant (rated 47 out of 5,400 restaurants in Dubai by TripAdvisor!)

This refreshingly different event however had used a variety of art forms to pay homage to the Satwa community, from street art and music, to photography and audiovisual, and had brought in tailors and key cutters directly from the local streets to add to the authenticity.

In order to make this happen seven UAE-based creatives were chosen by Tiger to be brand ambassadors, from the world of art, music, photography, design and graffiti, each spending two months immersing themselves into Satwa life. The resulting short film that they co-created was very well received and painted a clear picture of one of the city’s most vibrant lifelines (you can see all the artist clips here).

Project Satwa is only the first event of the series, so I’ll be keen to see which other communities are chosen for this project and what the creative portrayal will be (of course I’ll share my thoughts here) – hats off to Tiger for driving such a great local initiative!

Check out what the event looked like on this fab video