The Assilah Arts Festival Gets Wired
This year’s Assilah Festival is one of the first ever arts festival to be fully wired with an iPhone and Android app and regularly updated content. It might not be the most widely known of festivals, but this year festival-goers, fans and interested parties can be part of the activities at Assilah through their mobile phones.
The festival is a mix of everything from live music performances to screenings of movies to high level, all day conferences on Cultural Diplomacy. Every year, the walls of the ancient medina are painted white to allow mural artists from all over the world to showcase their abilities.
This year, the UAE is the guest of honor at the festival, and in celebration of that fact, URBN Travel, a Dubai based digital publishing company, working with the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage have produced an iPhone app, an Android app and a web app which can be accessed on over 5000 different types of mobile devices. Not only can you check out the application, you can find a whole range of regularly updated blog posts, images, videos, podcasts, live streams and more.
It’s the first time that something like this has happened at a festival in Morocco, and Eamonn Carey, director of URBN Travel, is delighted to be a part of it, “We’re pretty excited about being part of the Assilah Arts Festival. We’re hoping that by doing this, we’ll allow people from all over the world to connect with the festival through our apps and through the websites – that way, they can read about what’s happening, see tons of regularly updated images, view videos with the participants and generally get a feel for what the festival is all about. This is our first year at the festival, and already the buzz is starting to build. We hope that through our apps and content, we can let festival-goers, interested parties and random downloaders get a feel for what the Assilah Festival is all about.”
