Dubai Lime History

The Beginning - February – March 2007

Lime Green Entertainments LLC was created to bring Dubai’s community the best in local talent, by supporting local artists and helping them launch their careers.  We were started by Steve Vaile & Ram King two guys who simply wanted somewhere to play and listen to original music in Dubai.  In February 2007 we held an impromptu Open Mic in Berts Café in the Marina where 100 people turned up and the Dubai Lime was born from there.

Dubai Lime set out to run not for profit music, arts and cultural events in Dubai with the aim of bringing together Dubai residents from diverse backgrounds and using common denominators including music, arts and simply having fun and hanging out to break down some of the barriers in the city.

The name “The Dubai Lime” came from Steve’s year long experience of living in Trinidad and Tobago. For as long as pastel rum drinks and hedonistic pre-Lenten celebrations have been in fashion, fun-seekers have flocked to this tropical duet of lush islands to sunbathe, sway to calypso and savour the exotic flavours of its multicultural cuisine.  To “Lime” or “Liming” simply means chilling out, kicking back and enjoying yourself;  something that we felt was needed by the expatriate community in Dubai once they got board talking about money.

The Dubai Lime grew to bring in more people.  In March of 2007 we performed an event at the Central Perk Coffee shop where we met Dubai 92.  Within six weeks we were running the Open Mic radio show in partnership with 92 every Saturday from 7pm till 9pm.

We met Strawberry PR in March and they loved what we were doing for the community, so they decided to support us with Free PR services to promote the community forum.  Strawberry PR is an entertainments and lifestyle PR company in Dubai.  They worked wonders and soon we were full of gigs and in every paper, magazine and website in Dubai and getting a lot of coverage.  Steve continued to fund The Dubai Lime from his personal money made whilst working for The Ascala Group until he had exhausted his piggy bank of savings.  At this time he was working full time flying around the world and continued to fund the events as much as he could even though he often wasn’t around to enjoy them.

The Early Bits – March – May 2007

It didn’t stop there; we ran independent film nights, poetry nights and quite a few Lime Social nights.  Trying to get the events sponsored was incredibly difficult.  We were too small to be viable for a sponsor with only 400 subscribers and the only sponsorships we were offered being from Tobacco companies so we felt obliged to decline. We were too busy to run the forum part time.  With funds running low we formed Lime Green Entertainments to help fund the Dubai Lime. 

Lime Green Entertainments was originally conceptualised as an entertainment agency promoting Dubai Original Artists.  We ran the agency and corporate events for some months in Dubai but it never really took off.  We were constantly let down on payment by customers and bookings for amateur artists never really sold very well as could have been expected with hindsight. Would you want a novice playing at your party? 

With the battle between the DJ’s and Live Music and the costs of performance licences in Dubai for musicians it became clear that being an Entertainments agency wasn’t a winning strategy to secure the ongoing success of The Dubai Lime.

However unperturbed we put our heads down and kept the free events running.  By this time we were recording live at the events and producing our own Videos for posting to the website.  Costs were skyrocketing and although everyone loved what we were doing there were many days of digging down the back of the Steve’s Sofa for the odd dirham.  The group was growing but it was difficult to make ends meet to cover our expanded schedule of events.

The Almost Middle Bits – June – November 2007

We were now running corporate events for companies, although we couldn’t really compete in the market against well capitalised companies that simply had more money, more experience and more clients than Lime Green. The business that we were winning was at the cheap end of the market and only just covered our costs.  Still we kept running the Free Events and the Artistic forums for free under The Dubai Lime.  We justified the long days slogging on corporate events on the basis that it at least kept The Dubai Lime running.   

We were also running the monthly art exhibition for Dubai based artists to exhibit their work in Dubai.  The radio show was going well, artists were getting a lot of coverage in the press thanks to Strawberry and people loved the events – they only people that were not doing well was us. By this time we had pretty much exhausted all of Steve’s sofa money and we needed to do something drastic.

We then partnered with a venue that wasn’t doing that great at the time to run the Dubai Lime nights; this would be paid gigs with tickets that would help us cover the costs of running The Dubai Lime.

Steve had been working on the website for some time with the help of some of our members the website was growing and the events were always well turned out.  The Lime Nights were getting popular and finally original artists had a place to perform to a decent crowd and we were up to over 2000 members on Dubai Lime.

Then on two occasions the venue had failed to apply for the entertainment licences in time which resulted in us cancelling the events – the money spent on promotion had evaporated and to add to the distress the venue closed due to an emergency refurbishment. 

We scaled back the events to the free social events, open Mics and the Art events but still carried on in the belief that if the good guys were to win then we would have our day.

The Middle Bits – November – March 2007

To add to the complications we had invested a large chunk of our capital in renting a space for a not for profit audio studio which subsequently fell through when the property vendor changed their mind on the use of the space.  We were left flat broke again with only our humour and tenacity intact.  The money paid to the agent in fees was not so intact – in fact it was never seen again.

In October Steve’s company Ascala Group invested in a Technology company and he invested most of his time in building the company that developed into H2O . He continued to help out by funding the Dubai Lime website build.

H2O focused on developing web based applications for Media, Events and Entertainments companies in the Middle East.  The company was flying and winning large accounts over well entrenched competitors and expanded its operations into CRM and IT recruitment.  It was one of the few companies in Dubai with real life experience in developing applications like Dubai Lime and was doing well.

Lime Green on the other hand was not doing so well but just about surviving The Dubai Lime events had to be scaled back Lime Green borrowed money from H2O to keep the Open MICs and the community Art forums going. 

The Recent Bits – April – May 2007 

In May 2007 we took the decision to stop Lime Green, Lime Green simply wasn’t making any money and as a result it looked like we would need to close The Dubai Lime and stop the community forums.  We restructured the business to reduce our costs and try and save The Dubai Lime.

In just over a year the Dubai Lime has managed to provide a forum for Dubai based music, place over 40 original artists on the Radio, promote artists in Dubai, build a social community with over 7000 subscribers and a website getting over 50,000 unique users per month visiting it, ran over 20 independent artists exhibitions for free and now it looked like it was over. 

It was at this point that H2O New Media stepped in and purchased Lime Green.  H2O would continue to run The Dubai Lime and take the focus back to free community based events for the man on the street.  

The Dubai Lime would be run going forward as a complete not for profit enterprise and its costs would be paid for by H2O’s Corporate Social Responsibility budget and sponsorships.  

The Dubai Lime would continue to run free community based events, art forums and free social events and H2O would work with their clients to support The Dubai Lime with sponsorships.  Lime Green would continue to support its existing hotel customer’s entertainments.

Leading H2O customers like Strawberry, H2O, CMPi, Channels Exhibitions, CMPi, Blue Banana, Nora Dance, CSM Events, Dubai Drums, HP, Nokia  and many others stepped in to sponsor The Dubai Lime events for the reason they were created.  To provide free events to the Dubai community to foster community integration and develop grass roots arts and music.  

The Dubai Lime is now well funded and is back doing what we love, promoting arts and music for no other reason than to provide Dubai based residents with the opportunity to LIME independent of their monetary status. 

All of our events are FREE and we work to promote Artists and Music in Dubai for Free.  We are supported by sponsorships and display advertising on the website. 

We are constantly searching for new partnerships with companies that wish to sponsor our free events.  Now that we have over 7000 subscribers in Dubai that want to come to our events we are finally a very viable sponsorship solution and with the help of H2O we now have a website that offers Lime TV, the Entertainment Database and a ton of other functionality for FREE making us one of the most popular websites in Dubai.

More importantly you will be supporting the grass roots development of Dubai’s art and culture scene and support community integration which will allow your company to use your CSR budget to support something worthwhile and valuable.  To discuss sponsoring the Dubai Lime simply contact us, we are always looking for venue sponsors, corporate sponsors and new brands that want to talk to 7000 LIMERS in Dubai.