As the UAE’s cultural landscape expands, House of Arts at Expo City Dubai is trying to position itself at an earlier point in that journey.
Its new monthly programme, Saturdays at the House, offers children a low-stakes introduction to art, music and design, built around exploration rather than instruction. Beneath that sits a larger ambition: helping shape the next generation of artists, audiences and cultural workers from childhood onwards.
“We are neither an institute, neither a school, neither a university,” Amna Abulhoul, executive creative director of Expo City Dubai, tells The National. “We’re a community space that allows every child and every artist and everyone who wants to explore.”
The weekly programme runs from 8.30am to noon and is aimed at children aged 4 to 12, with tickets priced at Dh99 for two adults and two children, and Dh35 for each additional family member.
Its open-endedness shapes the structure of the morning. Rather than build the programme around one discipline, House of Arts has put movement, painting, music and design side by side.
The first edition included introductory karate sessions led by Champions Karate, live painting workshops, a film linked to Pablo Picasso, a branding session for teenagers and a logo-design workshop. The point is to appeal to children with different instincts and different attention spans in the same space.
“When we thought Saturday at the House, we thought of the child that wants to release their energy,” says Abulhoul. “We thought of the kid who wants to paint. We thought of the teen who is bored and thinks nothing is cool any more.”
That same thinking extends to music. In partnership with the Arab Music Institute, the programme includes sessions introducing children to Arab instruments, alongside repertoire classes and rhythm-based games for younger participants.
One of the shared family events centres on Peter and the Wolf, with a storyteller narrating while the music is played live and explained at the same time.
Parents are part of the design, too. The morning includes sessions on parenting, art therapy and sound healing, with time between activities for families to move through the building and around the courtyard. The aim is to make the venue feel lived in, not transactional.
“We felt it’s necessary to create a family activity together,” Abulhoul says.
That matters because House of Arts is trying to sit on the first rung of a much longer cultural ladder. As museums, performance spaces and arts initiatives continue to grow across the UAE, one question runs underneath all that expansion: how children are brought into that world early enough for it to feel familiar. House of Arts is trying to answer that by making experimentation itself the point.
“We want to be part of a person’s life, even if it is a grain of rice, something that makes them explore without feeling they might fail,” she says.
The programme is also being used to draw families into Interwoven, the venue’s inaugural exhibition, which features about 20 artists from across the Gulf. Tours are planned for different age groups, including children and very young visitors, with one route built around the work of contemporary Emirati artist Khalid Al Banna.
The longer-term ambition already stretches further. Performing arts are part of the plan, especially for children. The idea is to open up not only theatre itself, but also the work that surrounds it – scenic design, costume design and the crafts that sit behind a performance. That feels like a natural extension of what House of Arts is already trying to do: introduce culture through curiosity, rather than instruction.
“One thing I realised growing up here and being from the UAE, we’re missing performing arts,” Abulhoul says. “We want to introduce stuff to them, such as set design and costume design. What goes behind the theatre is something important, rather than just seeing a theatre play.”
For now, Saturdays at the House remains modest in scale. But the thinking behind it is larger than a single programme.
In a country investing heavily in cultural infrastructure, House of Arts is making the case that children should meet that world when they are still figuring themselves out.
Culture begins as habit, exposure and play. And from there, it becomes a part of every person's life, whether they go into the arts or not.
“This house is for everyone,” Abulhoul says.
