Artistic Exchange Retreat
Venue: Morish Café in Muscat Oman
Date: 28th to 30th May 2015

Artistic Dialogue Workshop

The Workshop started by a warm greeting from Louai Alasfahani, the man who made this event happen; he is the Director of Paragon Arts; Zaahirah Muthy the founder of ZeeArts Community took this opportunity to explain about this initiative objectives and thank Paragon Arts for their tremendous support. We had a deep presentation by Mr Saeed Alalawi about the Omani famous artists, Mr Anwar Sonya, Mrs Tahira and many others.

The next session was about The Voice of the Artists where each artist was given 2 minutes to introduce themselves and their arts. They used different support such as power point, their artwork and some prefer just to use the power of their voice.

What is your Brand? This was an interactive session focusing on the person and his/her brand as an artist. They were given a piece of paper to write about one word that reflects their personality as an artist. The artists were proudly moving around to introduce their brand to each other. Followed by How to Market your Arts? Another provocative session where the artists were divided into groups of 3 and they had to brainstorm on ‘How to market your Arts?’ Impressive and productive outcomes had been collected. We had a Role play by 4 volunteers (Ahmed, Amira, Kasia and Khalid) to present (How to approach a Gallery) we had two scenarios, a good approach and a less confident approach. The artists had the great opportunity to visualize the right approach. This was an impromptu play.

We were honored to have the presence of the Renown Emirati artist Mr Jalal Luqman, representing Arts in UAE; he presented the Art scene in UAE and he inspired the artists about his journey. The artists had the opportunity to ask questions directly. Finally we had an open dialogue on how we can build a sustainable relationship with UAE-Oman where Mr Jalal represents UAE and Mr Saeed representing Oman.