Dubai Festival City, one among the main sponsors of DSS 2007, is currently hosting the eighth week of Global Surprises where workshops of two countries, Turkey and Congo, are being held with a display of various traditional handicraft items.
The Turkey workshop is a vibrant corner with numerous hand-woven scarves and the traditional dress called kirklareli. Sonserayi, who has been involved in traditional Turkish weaving for almost fifteen years, says Turkish weaving is a combination of patterns and embroidery and finds favour with all people without exceptions.
"Turkish weaving is mostly done with cotton or wool and is characterised by the subtle patterns based on floral designs. One among the prominent kinds of weaving is the kasnaak or cross-weaving where a picture or scenery is woven," she says.
The kirklareli, a traditional woman's costume, shares its name with a city in the Eastern part of Turkey. It consists of an embroidered waistcoat called chapken and a loose trouser called shalwaarsh.
Sonserayi says the exhibition in Dubai as part of the Ten Surprises has enabled her to educate and enlighten people on the rich cultural tradition of Turkey, renowned for the advancements made in all areas during the Ottoman period. "This is my first visit to Dubai and it is nothing like how I envisioned it to be. I had expected to see more desert and few buildings but I was wrong. While interacting with visitors here, I came across numerous nationalities and I realized that Dubai has a multi-cultural society which is very encouraging for cultural exchanges."
Visitors to Dubai Festival City can visit the workshops between 5 and 10pm everyday till Wednesday, August 15th. Apart from the workshops, traditional Turkish and African folk dance shows are also being organized.
Launched in 1998, Dubai Summer Surprises was conceived as the foremost family entertainment event during the summer season for the whole of GCC. Targeted at visitors from outside the UAE and within the country, DSS has been a major entertainment and shopping attraction since its inception and witnessed 1,875,000 visitors in the year 2006 compared to 600,000 in 1998. The event has succeeded in positioning Dubai as the leading summer destination in the region.
The ten-week event is a celebration of different surprises that offer visitors and shoppers the perfect family entertainment opportunity and the ideal combination of shopping and adventure. Over the years DSS has hosted numerous surprises such as Food, Water, Global, Ice, Flower, Sports, Heritage, Arts, Techno, Cartoons, Colour, Sweets, Knowledge, and Back-2-School. The summer event lays special emphasis on children, who are provided all the opportunities to hone their skills while enjoying a fun-packed ten weeks of activities. DSS also has its own mascot, Modhesh, the ever smiling brand ambassador who embodies everything that the event stands for – fun, excitement, brightness and unlimited joy for children.
Dubai Summer Surprises as a venture has contributed significantly to the economy of Dubai and continues to do so by enhancing different economic sectors during a lean period of economic activity in summer. An increase in visitor expenditure from AED 850 million in 1998 to AED 2.57 billion in 2006 is a clear indication of the event's ability to drive economic growth during summer. Into its tenth year, Dubai Summer Surprises has come a long way by building on the successes of the previous editions and aims to create a benchmark for future years to provide the three most important characteristics of the event – shopping, winning, and entertainment.
