Beyond the Skyline: The Real Creative Pulse of MENA

Ahmad Swaid is one of the powerhouses of global media having served at GQ, Dazed, Nowness, and Garage Magazine. His ability to lead culture across both mediums and territories is second to none. LE BOOK took the time to get his thoughts on culture, creativity and storytelling in the Middle East for the Dubai CONNECTIONS conference. Ahmad Swaid is Editor In Chief of Dazed Magazine Middle East & North Africa.

When did you first realise media and storytelling might be your world, was there a catalyst, or did it evolve over time?

I didn’t “choose” media and storytelling so much as I became fascinated by what it does, how it shapes desire, belonging, and who and what gets seen. Growing up between places and cultures, while consuming predominantly Western media wherever I lived—London, Beirut, Freetown, Aleppo—I became acutely aware of what was included and what was erased. As an Afro-Arab and as a Muslim, that often came with a sense of invisibility. That awareness became my crucible.I wanted to work within the system not to reproduce it, but to question it, challenge it, and expand it.

That instinct became a mission: to build platforms and projects that reflect complexity, dignity, and imagination, without requiring people from the region to dilute themselves for Western or global approval. Much of my practice has been about moving beyond a singular idea of the “Middle East” or “MENA,” making space not only for Arab, North African, and Levantine narratives, but also for youth cultures shaped by South Asia, East Africa, Kurdistan, Central Asia, and beyond, communities often overlooked in media even locally. It is not about hierarchy; it is about collaboration. Communities are not simply represented; they are given agency. That begins with listening.

You’ve lived across so many places and cultures, and now you’re shaping culture for an entire region, when everything things get noisy externally, what do you personally come back to as your compass? What keeps you grounded in your work?

When things get noisy externally, I return to something simple: I put on music and I walk, out in the world, without a destination in mind. It’s the fastest way I know to recalibrate.

Music has always been my compass an art form that holds feeling and contradiction without needing to explain itself. I return to what I loved as a teenager because it brings back that first-discovery rush: The Beach Boys, The Blaze, Lil’ Kim, The Smiths, Grace Jones, Shabjdeed. I still remember hearing The Velvet Underground at fourteen and realising music could change the way I felt, and the way I saw everything. It recentres me.

Dubai is often seen externally through lenses of scale and spectacle, what does creativity in the UAE actually look like from the inside?

From the inside it’s far more layered, bold and intimate than people imagine. Yes, there’s ambition and there are challenges, but that’s true anywhere. What’s often missing from the external conversation is that beneath the spectacle there is a dense network of young creatives and diasporic communities, editors, designers, photographers, and writers building something collectively. That foundation is what makes the future here genuinely exciting.

The obsession with the skyline has become a convenient shortcut, a way to reduce the city and its communities to aesthetics and economics and avoid engaging with what’s actually being made. A lot of the criticism isn’t even about creativity, it’s about discomfort and prejudice with the region as a whole and the idea of it having cultural authorship at all. There’s a fear and a laboured prejudice that people project onto the GCC, instead of spending time here and listening properly.

How should brands think about storytelling in a region shaped by rapid growth, migration, and layered identities?

Brands need to start from one premise: this region isn’t a monolith, and it can’t be reduced to a single aesthetic, narrative, or consumer profile. It’s shaped by rapid growth and migration, yes, but also by shared cultures and contradictions that sit side by side in the same cities. If you don’t understand that layering, you’ll default to clichés. And this is where I’m honestly tired of the conversation around “authenticity.” Authenticity isn’t something you apply after the fact as a styling choice. It has to be built in from the beginning through research, presence, and trust: who you commission, who leads creatively, and who gets to author the narrative rather than simply appear in it. That means spending real time here. Listening properly. Understanding context, history, and nuance. If every Ramadan campaign still defaults to lanterns and deserts, that’s not cultural sensitivity, it’s just laziness.

Also, we deserve campaigns that go beyond Ramadan. The brands that resonate are the ones that collaborate long-term, invest in relationships, and tell stories that feel specific, contemporary, and true to how people actually live and imagine.

How do you nurture regional talent while maintaining international relevance?

I don’t see nurturing regional talent and maintaining international relevance as opposites. The strongest work travels precisely because it’s rooted, because it has an eye, integrity, and depth.

I’m also wary of the idea that “international relevance” equals Western validation. That mindset is shifting, and the work that resonates most is often the work that refuses to dilute itself.

I’ve seen that firsthand. Last year we commissioned a deeply local story in the known Sporting Club in Beirut with Gucci and ran two covers, a video that went viral and a photoshoot that racked up incredible engagement. To this day, it’s the project people stop me to talk about the most. That tells you something: when you represent a place with confidence and specificity, and also empower local communities it travels.

At the same time, I refuse to limit creatives by geography. Labeling people as “regional” can be quietly damaging. My job is to build the right conditions, commission with intention, and let artists speak on their own terms.

What excites you most about the emerging creative ecosystem between youth culture, brand and publishing in the UAE right now?

What excites me most right now is the breakdown of rigid hierarchies. Young creatives in the UAE move fluidly between youth culture, brands, publishing, social platforms, and independent work, and there’s something powerful about no longer needing the old guard or legacy media to function. Yes, there’s still credibility in institutions, but there’s far less waiting for permission.

People are building their own ecosystems in real time, launching platforms, experimenting with new formats, and redefining what success looks like for themselves. And because the UAE is shaped by migration and hybridity, the work comes out layered and contemporary, it doesn’t rely on one reference point or one inherited aesthetic.

That energy isn’t isolated either. You feel it in Dubai, in Doha, in Saudi, in Beirut, Cairo and beyond. There is a sense of optimism, opportunity, and possibility, where culture is actively being authored rather than simply consumed.

You’ve led both editorial and commercial worlds, how do you think brands should approach creativity in the Middle East differently than in Europe or the US?

Brands often misread the Middle East because they treat it as a translated market. They import a strategy from Europe or the US, dilute it under the banner of “sensitivity,” and the result is cautious work that defaults to cliché. Audiences here are far too literate for that. If your cultural shorthand is lanterns, deserts, and vague tradition, you’re not being respectful, you’re avoiding specificity.

A more intelligent approach starts with presence and authorship. Spend time here. Listen properly. Commission work that reflects how people actually live, and give creatives real agency rather than using culture as a backdrop. The region is shaped by migration, hybridity, and rapid change, and that complexity is exactly what makes it creatively compelling.

This isn’t only a market, it’s a cultural engine. The future isn’t arriving here later; in many ways it’s being authored here now. That requires a different kind of creativity, one that can hold contradictions, move fast, and still feel true.

That’s the intersection I work in. I operate fluently between editorial and commercial worlds, between global standards and local truth. I sit at the intersection because I’ve done it in practice: pushing institutions forward, building teams, and commissioning work that can travel without flattening the people and contexts it comes from. And one last thing: this region is deeply rooted in storytelling. The strongest work isn’t the kind that costumes itself in tradition, but the kind that understands those roots and builds something genuinely contemporary from them

When you look ahead, for yourself and for the region, what are you most hopeful about over the next few years?

I’m hopeful about a shift toward work that’s less dependent on permission, whether that’s permission from legacy institutions, Western validation, or inherited ideas of what the region is “allowed” to be or talk about. I’m excited by the rise of independent and hybrid media, and by brands and patrons who are beginning to understand that meaningful cultural impact does not come from one-off gestures.

For the region, I’m hopeful about a generation that refuses erasure and refuses easy narratives. There’s a growing insistence on complexity, and a confidence in authorship, people are building their own platforms, archives, scenes, without asking to be legitimised by anyone else. That is the cultural turning point.

Personally, I’m hopeful about expanding beyond traditional publishing into projects and platforms that can hold more depth, more experimentation, and more collaboration. I want to keep making space for voices and conversations that are overlooked even locally, and to keep pushing institutions forward from the inside while also building structures that can outlast any one person. There’s still so much left to imagine.