This week Abu Dhabi Week towers has opened its doors to some new recruits.
Written by: Charlie Kennedy
This week Abu Dhabi Week towers has opened its doors to some new recruits. Nothing new there except, well, they’re noticeably younger that the rest of the team, they leave earlier than the rest of us, and they have an impressive ability to operate DVD players and analyse the Twilight books.
In fact our four work experience students are going down a storm – particularly by whirring together some great, fresh ideas for a junior version of the parent magazine. While Abu Dhabi Week goes about its usual business, our young interns are busy putting together Abu Dhabbler Week – a younger and (hopefully) hipper version of our weekly publication that will appeal to their generation. Which, after much discussion, seems to be a target range of 13 to 17.
We’re looking at doing Dhabbler as a monthly supplement to the original, but Dhabbler will definitely become a regular online addition to the magazine.
Teens in general seem to attract a bit of bad press, at least in terms of stereotypes – incoherent mumbling matched with an extraordinary capacity for sleep and an uncanny ability to extract maximum value from hanging around malls. Phew. Our interns, we can smugly say, are completely different. They work well, they work hard, they’re keen, they’re good at turning up on time, they don’t grumble about the grunt work that interns have to endure. They’re also bursting with ideas – good ones, too.
If our young group is anything to go by, the future’s looking pretty good. And young talent extends far and wide in Abu Dhabi. Take Leo Itsuki Foord-Kelcey; he’s ten years old, a student at the British School Al Khubairat who has studied piano at Elite Music Institute for the last three years and played his first concerto with an orchestra when he was just seven years old at the fourth Abu Dhabi Classics festival. The young maestro will be performing at Emirates Palace this Saturday, 27th March, playing at the Abu Dhabi Festival’s Childrens Concert.
But it turns out he’s the tip of an iceberg. We know of a squash star barely into his teens, golfing winners in braces, some very cool skateboarders ... and a load of bright, articulate, interested and interesting youngsters who deserve as much applause. So expect more young talent at the threshold of further developments across the burgeoning Abu Dhabi Week Empire. The future’s certainly held in young hands in Abu Dhabi ...
