An oasis of art and design

Community connections

Each winter, the AlUla Arts Festival returns with the confidence of a place steadily claiming its spot on the global stage. Now in its fifth edition, the festival has become a landmark event: intimate in scale yet ambitious in scope, and rooted firmly in the landscapes, heritage and creative communities that define this remarkable pocket of north-west Saudi Arabia. It brings together visual art, design, architecture, music and performance, with each edition introducing a number of new commissions that respond to AlUla’s unique landscapes and threads of culture. Artists and designers don’t simply arrive to exhibit: they arrive to listen, discover and interpret.

AlUla’s creative ecosystem has expanded rapidly in recent years, from long-term projects such as Wadi AlFann, the vast “valley of the arts” scheduled to open in 2028, to the forthcoming Museum of Contemporary Art. Add to that the AlJadidah Arts District, the Design Space AlUla and the Madrasat Addeera craft school and the festival becomes an annual showcase of a growing, year-round cultural infrastructure. It acts as the nexus of all its initiatives, the annual point in time where artists, visitors and locals can immerse personally in its creative spirit.

This year’s programme reinforces that interconnectedness. The festival’s recurring theme – land – threads through contemporary exhibitions, design commissions and Desert X AlUla, with artists examining everything from geology to memory. “We enable artists to respond not just to landscape but also to cultural heritage – some respond to the histories and stories of the place; others respond to the colour of the earth itself,” says Sumantro Ghose, artistic programming director. For international artists, the draw is clear. AlUla is not the largest festival, he admits, but its ambition lies elsewhere.

Many arrive in AlUla expecting scale and spectacle, but they leave speaking about something different: the ability to make work that is intimately tied to its environment, and a festival model that insists on community engagement. Musicians lead workshops in the Music Hub; designers spend time with artisans at Madrasat Addeera; choreographers collaborate with local performers. It was here, last year, that a new contemporary dance work, commissioned from British choreographer Akram Khan and developed with Saudi talent Manal AlDowayan, premiered before embarking on a major international tour.

Ultimately, the festival’s character flows from a lighter approach – one that favours sensitivity over spectacle, is guided by the local environment and refuses to overshadow the landscape. The curatorial direction is guided by place, and by anchoring the programme of art, performance and design in physicality. What AlUla Arts Festival has created couldn’t simply be plucked and transposed to another gallery, another city, another world. It is deeply rooted in situ, responding to, and continually being shaped by, its immediate climate.