Culture Summit was set up by the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi in 2017 as a global annual convening in Abu Dhabi bringing together an exceptional collective of creative thinkers, artists, change makers and leaders from the culture and creative industries with the ambition to identify ways in which culture can transform societies and communities worldwide and turn these into actions and solutions.

Every year, the Culture Summit explores a specific theme over three days of thoughtfully programmed panel discussions, keynotes, presentations, live performances, and conversations, in collaboration with global partner organisations, including UNESCO, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Economist Impact, Google, the Design Museum, among other art, technology, and media organisations from around the world.

Through this year’s theme, A Matter of Time, we will explore our changing relation to time, how this change is impacting the way culture is produced, received and consumed but also the role culture – which so often holds together past, present, future – could play to help us navigate this moment of inflection in the way we relate to the notion of time, moving from a ‘mechanical time’ characteristic of our contemporary era to a ‘new cultural time’ realigned with the rhythm of human awareness and nature.