Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that culture and the arts have a significant impact beyond their aesthetic value, contributing to economic and social development through their external or instrumental influences. These influences are influences. These influences are beneficial when the arts are viewed as a means to achieve broad social and economic goals rather than for the art’s sake alone (McCarthy et al., 2004).

Despite the increasing recognition that cultural and creative industries are key drivers for the economy, there is a gap between discussions on creative industries and surrounding stakeholders' perspectives in the arts sector. Bridging this gap involves investigating different creative sectors and designing a vision and a set of strategies to improve the UAE's cultural and creative industries' ability to promote their position globally. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring strategies to enable sustainable relationships between the cultural and creative industries and their stakeholders. The study investigates the stakeholder's knowledge of the current UAE's cultural and creative industries strategy and their understanding of the country's art environment. Additionally, this thesis explores how stakeholders in the performing arts sector are responding to and facing the challenges of recent changes in the cultural and creative industries.

The study employs a descriptive approach, which involves identifying possible or alternative stakeholder engagement methods through a literature review and identifying best practices that increase the likelihood of more engaged and communicated stakeholders by surveying cultural industries stakeholders with a questionnaire.

Findings reveal that stakeholder engagement is a key requirement for sustaining the performing arts sector and enhancing the positioning of the UAE's cultural and creative industries. In addition, the results identify a set of best practices to ensure a two-way dialogue with key stakeholders.

Therefore, the guidelines and best practices identified in this research can serve as a framework to improve the interaction with cultural and creative industry stakeholders, or as a basis for comparing international cases.

Keywords: Cultural and creative, performing arts, Stakeholders perspectives, Stakeholder engagement, stakeholder communication.