In Abu Dhabi, investment in culture is helping to build the foundations of a diversified, future-facing economy.
Between 2022 and 2025, Abu Dhabi‘s cultural and creative industries recorded 13.4% growth in the number of creative businesses, while employment increased by 14.2%. Cultural exports expanded by more than 120%, and the sector’s GDP grew by 16%.
Culture as an economic priority
Abu Dhabi’s cultural economy is supported by conscious strategic decisions, taken over a decade ago, to position culture as a pillar of long-term economic diversification alongside energy, finance, tourism, and other sectors.
This vision was reflected in the development of Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island Cultural District – a purpose-built hub designed to attract world-class cultural institutions, stimulate creative business ecosystems, and signal Abu Dhabi’s ambitions as a global cultural capital.
Saadiyat Cultural District is now home to cultural institutions such as Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, the Abrahamic Family House, teamLab Phenomena, and the newly launched Dar al Funoon Abu Dhabi (House of the Arts), which create significant opportunities for creative industries and their satellites.
The wider economic effects are also visible through Saadiyat Island, where the Saadiyat Cultural District is located, which has seen a 14% visitor increase across its cultural landmarks and hotels in 2025, contributing to a total of 8.6 million visitors across the emirate’s culture sites.
This shows how cultural infrastructure can stimulate tourism, hospitality, real estate, and urban development simultaneously.
International Museum Day – Saadiyat Cultural District – Zayed National Museum
Investing in youth and future human capabilities
Strategic investments in museums, heritage, creative industries, public art, and cultural infrastructure have been accompanied by Cultural-Tech initiatives to support young people in areas like gaming, film production, music, and design.
These technology-driven industries remain rooted in culture, creating new employment opportunities for young talent while strengthening Abu Dhabi’s wider creative economy.
Programmes such as Made with Louvre Abu Dhabi encourage collaborations between museums and creative SMEs, entrepreneurs, designers, digital content producers, heritage specialists, and intellectual-property-driven businesses.
The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi’s Virtual Museum Sessions engaged more than 7500 students and over 500 teachers locally and internationally since launching in April through an interactive blend of live guidance, recorded content, and follow-up activities.
These examples illustrate how investment in culture can create broader opportunities when it is made a priority – not operating alongside the economy, but as a central part of its future.
Better cultural data helps anticipate future needs
Abu Dhabi has invested not only in cultural infrastructure but also in the data and measurement systems needed to understand, evaluate, and strengthen its long-term contribution to society.
This reflects a broader vision of anticipatory government, where AI, integrated data, and foresight help anticipate future challenges rather than simply respond to them. Among different models, Abu Dhabi is working towards an AI-native architecture, GovOS, which enables AI agents, data, and workflows to coordinate seamlessly across government entities.
Key capabilities include intelligent orchestration of services across government entities, predictive service delivery through machine learning, and contextual AI assistance providing personalised, multilingual guidance tailored to individual life experiences.
Alongside these technological capabilities, Abu Dhabi has launched AI Majalis, using the traditional majlis setting – a cornerstone of Emirati culture – to create open and trusted spaces for dialogue.
These community forums prepare citizens and residents for the digital future by exploring practical applications of AI in everyday life while fostering awareness of its responsible and ethical use. They also contribute to a broader evidence base by generating insights into community values, public perceptions, and citizens’ experiences of technological change.
Combined with quantitative cultural indicators, cultural participation data, and administrative data, these insights strengthen governments’ ability to understand not only what is changing, but how change is experienced across communities, helping ensure that AI-supported policymaking remains grounded in local contexts, human needs, and informed public dialogue.
Policy lessons beyond Abu Dhabi
Around the world, policymakers at all levels are seeking new sources of sustainable growth while strengthening resilience against economic uncertainty, climate change and demographic transformation.
In Barcelona, long-term investment in cultural heritage has transformed the Sagrada Família into a global cultural and economic asset supporting employment, tourism and urban development. In Singapore, sustained investment in museums, heritage, arts districts, and the creative economy has positioned culture as an integral component of the country’s innovation and talent strategy.
As more governments recognise culture as a strategic asset, Abu Dhabi’s experience suggests some practical policy lessons:
- treat cultural infrastructure as economic infrastructure;
- connect cultural investment to youth and future human capabilities;
- catalyse creative business ecosystems through major cultural assets; and
- use robust data and forward-looking governance to leverage AI to support investment decisions and evaluate impact.
Taken together, these lessons point to a practical conclusion: culture policy should no longer sit at the margins of economic strategy. When cultural assets are connected to skills, enterprise, tourism, technology and urban development, they can become engines of opportunity across the wider economy.
Abu Dhabi’s experience shows that culture can be more than a reflection of prosperity. With the right policy framework, it can help produce it.
For further reading, see here: The role of culture‑led regeneration in place transformation | OECD
Dr. Elena Raevskikh is a Russian–French public policy researcher specialising in evidence-informed governance, institutional intelligence, and long-term public value. She is Head of the Research and Analysis Unit at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, where she leads CultureSTATS-AD, the MENA region's pioneering programme for culture research, measurement, and evidence-informed policymaking. Since 2019, she has led the development of evidence and measurement frameworks that inform government strategy, policy, and resource allocation. Her work spans government, academia, and international organisations, with collaborations including UNESCO, OECD, IFACCA, ENCATC, the World Economic Forum, and WCCF. Her research has been published in leading international journals. Her current work explores how governments can build institutional intelligence by integrating evidence, human expertise, and artificial intelligence to strengthen strategic decision-making.
Dr. Giovanna Di Mauro is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Zayed University.
Prior to her current roles, she was a Lecturer at King's College London (School of Security Studies) and at Collegium Civitas in Warsaw (Department of Peace and Conflict Studies). She has also worked for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Her professional experience also includes collaborations with the U.S. Department of State and the College of Europe.
Dr. Di Mauro received her PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, covering topics including international affairs, cultural economy, sustainability, and public policy.