13 April 2011

Masdar's first community event

Masdar has recently announced the inauguration of a reoccurring public community event "The Market@Masdar City."    The first one will be on Friday 29 April, from 10 am - 5pm. A recent email I received promised the event will "bring together artists, organic producers, food stalls, spas and entertainment."   Spas.  Not exactly what I think of when I think of markets or community events, but the rest sounds exciting. 

The event is completely open to the public, everyone is welcome.

More info about the event here.

Location map here.

It's been very interesting to see Masdar open itself up to the public. When my brother visited in January, he asked if he could blog about how other people could find their way to Masdar to explore it.  At the time, I told him no because it wasn't really clear whether Masdar was open to the public or not.  I suspected that security would likely turn away random people showing up to just look around.  However, shortly after that, at the end of January, random families started appearing on campus all the time.  I'd walk out of the library and dodge around toddlers playing around the fountain, or see couples lugging grocery bags from the Organic food store, families relaxing at Caribou Coffee or enjoying dinner at Sumo Sushi.

By the time my brother came back through the UAE in March after some epic traveling, I told him it was fine to blog about directions to Masdar as random families were showing up all the time, which seemed to be encouraged as they bring a lot of support for the businesses here which would otherwise have to rely on less than 300 students/faculty/admin who work and reside on campus.

I'm glad the campus feels more open now.  It's nice to have signs of life other than grad students toiling away in labs.

4 comments:

Joost Bonsen said...

Excellent to hear about the visitor-friendliness. That's one of my favorite aspects of MIT -- how open we are to random tourists. Who knows which of those kids gets inspired to apply and study and invent something epic!

Masdar should be a magnet for innovation-minded peoples widely!

--Joost

Unknown said...

Laura -- Any chance you want to talk with me about your experiences in Masdar for an article I'm writing? I'd much appreciate it.


David Biello
Associate Editor, Environment & Energy
Scientific American
75 Varick Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10013-1917
dbiello [at] sciam.com

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