Issue 38 of Shawati’ marks our 10th anniversary, which is a considerable amount of time, yet relatively short when speaking about the life of a publication. Our latest issue is an important benchmark for us to celebrate and reflect upon. As with all things in life, there have been great moments and occasional challenges that mark every issue we’ve printed in the last decade. These obstacles have only made us stronger, and our conviction that much greater. We live in an age where nothing seems to last – everything and everyone is transient. Ideas, convictions, people, and entire nations fall out of favour and become obsolete at warp speed. Even the world of print is becoming a dying art form. Magazines and books will one day become relics of the past, giving way to a new wave of digital platforms sprouting up by the millisecond, containing fast-paced blurbs of mass-produced information.

That’s the exact opposite of who we are, and what we’re about. We strive to make each issue special and unique, to continually reinvent ourselves, so that each issue surpasses the last one and carries its own distinctive qualities. One mantra that has become our guiding force while creating each issue is to treat each one as though it were the last. This is what forces us to constantly challenge ourselves, and to push creative and editorial boundaries. We not only strive to capture a moment, but also to embrace the people, places and events that comprise that moment. We aspire to engage, stimulate, and provoke thought in our readers.

Throughout the last ten years Shawati’ has given a podium to a generation of innovative leaders, thinkers and visionaries. These people, and their farsighted initiatives have helped shape the world we live in today. Locally and globally, our aim has always been to share the best of Abu Dhabi and the UAE, with the rest of the world.