Quoz Arts Fest is returning to Dubai this weekend

Here’s your guide to the best bits from the region’s biggest arts and culture festival at Alserkal Avenue…

Live music, outdoor installations, free concerts, and lots and lots of food. For eight years, Quoz Arts Fest has been drawing in families, creatives and hipsters alike to the cool warehouses of Alserkal Avenue to celebrate arts in the region.

Free and open to the public all day and all evening, this is your one-stop shop for culture in the heart of Dubai’s creative district. Here’s all the best things to do at Quoz Arts Fest.

See contemporary dance

Ansaf, a contemporary dance performance by Sima Dance Company, choreographed by Alaa Krimed, explores questions and concepts facing the Arab World.

Support Palestine

In collaboration with Cinema Akil, the GCC’s first arthouse cinema, catch an array of alternative Palestinian films at the Reel Palestine Film Festival. There’ll also be talks and a market of Palestinian crafts and flavours.

Laugh at improv

Check out the troupes from Courtyard Playhouse as they perform improvised plays, plus live drawings with Ali Razavi and an Art of Zero Waste workshop with Yasmin Sinai.

Take a walk

Join the Photo Walkof Al Quoz, with the photo buffs from Gulf Photo Plus, followed by a cyanotype workshop at GPP gallery space.

Explore Akka Project gallery

Akka Project gallery presents an exhibition of art, culture and cuisine from South Africa titled Africa & the other 54 countries.

Meet the thesbians

The popular 10-minute play festival called Short+Sweet Theatre Festival kicks off this weekend at the Junction theatre. This six-week long event brings talented actors, writers and directors together to show off their skills and bring you a wonderful season of short theatre.

Hear regional music

Regional band 47Soul is hosting a free concert at The Yard, Alserkal Avenue, on Friday January 24. The Jordanian-Palestinian band combines traditional dabke music with electronic beats and is best-known for creating Shamstep, a combination of mijwiz (a levantine folk musical style) and dubstep.

Taste and debate at a special food exhibition

From urban farming to gastronomic experiments and synthetic meat, this exhibition entitled FOOD: Bigger than the plate, previously staged at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, brings together the politics and pleasure of food to ask how the collective choices we make can lead to a more sustainable, just and delicious food future.

This iteration of the exhibition, presents a quirky approach to experiencing food, and understanding how the collective choices we make can lead to a more sustainable food future.

Quoz Arts Festival, Alserkal Avenue, street 8, Al Quoz, Dubai, January 24 and 25, 10am to 10pm, free. Tel: (04) 333 3464. alserkalavenue.ae