Nearly 700 young Emiratis applied for just 30 spots in the Abu Dhabi Global Shapers Hub this year. Among them is Eissa Al Awadhi, an entrepreneur and creative director who founded Ma3an Art Production while still at university and now works across Abu Dhabi's creative organisations. His pitch for joining is simple: he wants stronger pathways for young Emiratis into the creative economy and private sector, the same gap that shows up every time someone searches for a casting agency in Dubai and finds a handful of names controlling who gets seen.
That level of demand for 30 unpaid community roles says something uncomfortable about the paths that already exist. If nearly 700 people are competing for a volunteer leadership programme just to get closer to the creative economy, the formal entry points, including the traditional casting agency in Dubai, are clearly not wide enough for the number of people who want in.
What does a casting agency in Dubai actually do
A casting agency in Dubai typically works as a middleman between brands, production houses and the talent pool. Agencies build a roster, take a cut or a retainer, and control which names get submitted for which briefs. For decades this was the only route into fashion campaigns, TV commercials and film work across the UAE.
The model has real value. A good casting agency in Dubai knows which brief needs which face, and can move fast when a client needs a shortlist by end of day. But it also means access runs through a small number of gatekeepers, and if a name is not already on their books, that person may never see the brief at all.
Younger creatives entering the market today are often left cold-calling agencies or waiting weeks just to be seen, let alone booked. That bottleneck is precisely the kind of barrier Al Awadhi is describing when he talks about pathways into the creative economy.
Why demand is outgrowing the old casting agency in Dubai model
The UAE has been deliberately growing its creative sector for years. The government's own strategy document sets out that the National Strategy for the Cultural and Creative Industries targets 5 per cent of GDP by 2031, alongside efforts to attract creative talent from around the world.
Dubai has run a parallel push, one that other GCC markets are now watching closely. The emirate's own economic strategy aims to more than double Dubai's creator base from 70,000 to 140,000 by 2025. That is a lot more actors, models, dancers and crew chasing work through a handful of legacy agencies that were never built to scale at that pace.
Al Awadhi's frustration with pathways into the creative economy mirrors what talent tells us directly, and the numbers back it up. According to Thrilla's survey of over 5,000 UAE creative professionals, 75% have waited six months or more to get paid, more than once. A crowded talent pool funnelled through a small number of agencies does not just create access problems, it creates payment problems too.
The gap between a casting agency in Dubai and a real talent marketplace
A traditional casting agency in Dubai works on relationships and gatekeeping. A marketplace works on visibility instead. Rather than waiting to be picked up by an agent, talent on Thrilla builds a profile once and gets discovered directly by brands, agencies and production houses across the UAE, the wider GCC and Australia.
There is no commission taken from bookings and no agency deciding who gets submitted first. Actors, models, DJs, photographers, videographers, stylists and events crew set their own rates and apply for briefs that match their skills, rather than hoping an agent puts their name forward on their behalf.
Thrilla is also building toward guaranteed on-time payments, so the wait for a fee after a job wraps stops being the norm rather than the exception. That single change addresses the exact pain point behind that 75% figure, a gap no casting agency in Dubai has solved even for talent already on its own books.
Clients are free forever on Thrilla too. No subscription, no commission, no fee, ever charged to the brand or production house doing the hiring.
Building better pathways into Dubai's creative economy
Al Awadhi's push for stronger pathways into the creative economy is not just about one youth leadership programme. It reflects a wider truth about Dubai and the UAE more broadly: the ambition to grow the sector is real, but the infrastructure connecting talent to opportunity has lagged behind that ambition for years.
A casting agency in Dubai will always have its place for high-touch, relationship-driven bookings. But for the thousands of creatives who want a fair shot at commercial work across the GCC region without waiting on an agent's goodwill, a direct marketplace closes a gap legacy models were never designed to close in the first place.
Brands and production houses feel the friction too. Every hire made through a traditional agency comes with a markup and a delay while the agency manages both sides of the deal. A direct marketplace strips that layer out entirely, connecting the brief straight to the person who can deliver it.
That is the structural shift Al Awadhi is pointing at, even if he is describing a youth leadership hub rather than a booking platform. Emirati creatives, and the wider pool of talent working across Dubai and the UAE, need more doors into the industry, not just a better-run version of the same gate. Thrilla exists to be one of those new doors, built for how the region's creative economy actually works today, not how it worked a decade ago.
Talent ready to skip the waitlist can join Thrilla and start building a profile today. Brands and production teams looking to book verified creative talent across the UAE can get started with Thrilla at no cost.
