Monday, Oct 13, 2008

Gulf News

Abu Dhabi: A new media park named "twofour54" was launched with the professed objective of establishing Abu Dhabi as a centre of excellence for Arabic content creation, top officials said on Sunday.

"Through this initiative, Abu Dhabi is looking forward to becoming a source of innovative and far-reaching media content," said Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority.

He said the media park, which gets its name from the geographical co-ordinates of Abu Dhabi, would generate and distribute home-grown content to the rest of the world.

The launch of the initiative, which was attended by General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, brings together local, regional and international companies from the film, broadcasting, digital publishing and music industries.

The twofour54 ecosystem offers production facilities, infrastructure, training and a new business incubator at a single site for the development of world-class Arabic content for a 300 million-strong Arab audience, said Tony Orsten, chief executive officer of twofour54.

"The Abu Dhabi 2030 vision seeks to establish the emirate as a regional centre for culture with a global capital city as its hub. An extremely important part of achieving this vision lies in creating a thriving international media industry which, to be successful, needs to be local at the same time," Orsten said.

Twofour54 is built around four pillars - twofour54 tadreeb, twofour54 ibtikar, twofour54 intaj and twofour54 tawasol - located within a campus-style environment.

Twofour54 tadreeb will be the region's premier vocational training academy, targeting young Arabs and graduates considering a career in the media industry as well as providing existing media and entertainment professionals with opportunities to develop skills across a comprehensive range of media and content industry disciplines.

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