Innovation City and TikTok LIVE Open MENA's First Creators' Studio in Ras Al Khaimah
The five-room facility in Innovation City Free Zone gives creators in music, beauty and interactive formats a place to produce, collaborate and test new livestreaming formats.
Innovation City and TikTok LIVE have opened a creators' studio in Ras Al Khaimah, billed as the first TikTok LIVE Creators' Studio in the Middle East and North Africa. It sits inside the Innovation City Free Zone and is organised around five rooms for livestreaming, content production and collaboration. The studio is built for creators working in music, beauty and interactive formats.
The space is divided by format. Two Match Rooms are set aside for real-time interaction between creators. A Music Room handles performances and artist-led content. A Beauty Room is fitted for tutorials. A Main Zone covers joint projects and other creative work that does not fit the other three.
The setups are meant to let creators trial new formats before committing to them, lift production quality and work across categories that normally stay separate. The wider aim is audience growth and the earning opportunities that follow from it — turning regular output into something closer to a business.
Doors are open Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Weekend access requires prior booking.
Anas Hijjawi, acting CEO of Innovation City, described the studio as infrastructure rather than a launch event. It is about giving creators "the structure and support to turn their ideas into lasting businesses," he said. Creators, in his account, should start from the same practical footing as any other founder: a place to produce, partners to work with, and a community around them.
the structure and support to turn their ideas into lasting businesses,
He said the creator economy is becoming an important part of digital economy growth in the UAE, and that Ras Al Khaimah can play a meaningful role in that growth. The TikTok LIVE partnership, he added, makes that access easier and marks the start of a long-term relationship with creators rather than a one-off project.
Boxia Liu, head of TikTok LIVE for MENA and Türkiye, said the platform gives creators somewhere to share their talents, express themselves authentically and build meaningful connections with communities in real time. The Innovation City partnership, Liu said, creates a dedicated space for content production, idea development and audience engagement.
Free zones in the UAE have generally been built around trade, logistics and licensing, with the real estate doing most of the work of attracting companies. Courting livestreamers is a different proposition. Livestreaming rewards consistency more than equipment: a creator who shows up nightly on a phone can outgrow one with a full studio and no schedule. What a physical space offers is repetition — a room booked, a corner set up the same way each time, a collaborator two doors down instead of a message thread. Whether that converts into businesses will depend on how often the five rooms are full on a Tuesday afternoon.
