CURRENT NATIONAL
CULTURAL DEBATE
IN MALTA
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A presentation by Mario Azzopardi at the Interarts Barcelona Colloquium,
April 2004
To understand the context of this brief
presentation about the nature of cultural public debate in Malta, it would be useful to refer
to some very basic facts and statistics.
Malta is the smallest state that will join the
European Union on the 1st May.
It consists of two main islands, and the total surface area is only 320
square kilometers. With a population of
390,000, Malta is the most
thickly populated country in Europe,
accounting for 1,250 persons per square km. This number increases annually by approximately
1.2 million tourists. There is also a
substantial flow of irregular emigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. The
latest figures show 1,700 arrivals in 2002.
The workforce
comprises 138,000 gainfully employed workers and 27% of the economy rests on
tourism services. The Gross Domestic Product per capita is 13.000 US dollars,
against the average 23.000 in the fifteen EU countries as at present. The unemployment rate is 7.5% and the annual
economical growth is 0.8%. Malta
also has the highest public sector debt in per cent of the GDP: 66%.
Looking at the
cultural sector, the Government has budgeted $ 2.8 million as contributions to
state artistic institutions and an additional $ 0.6 million for activities and
events, including a jazz festival, a nationwide carnival and activities
associated with official feasts.
Expenditure for culture represents roughly 0.9% of the state budget for
2004.
Given Malta’s
high concentration of heritage sites (22 in all, with seven of them protected
by UNESCO as world patrimony) this budget is obviously very short of
expectation. Even the Ministry
responsible for Culture and the Arts admits that the country should contribute
more to sustain its cultural profile. With a heritage going back 5,000 years, including
spectacular temples and the historic, baroque city of Valletta,
the capital built in the 16th century by the Knight-Hospitalers of St. John, the budget
provided for heritage is drastically low.
Such a budget does not allow, for example, the slightest possibility for
underwater archeology: situated as it is in the centre of the Mediterranean, Malta,
argue the experts, must be a unique sight for underwater heritage research.
NGOs blame the
politicians, “the ruling elite”, for their “ignorance and indifference towards
the sad state of Malta’s
cultural heritage.”
A national forum held last November (2003) declared squarely that “Malta’s
education must start with its political leaders.” The forum revealed that invaluable research
was only being carried out thanks to the generosity of scholars, many of whom
paid for the research out of their own pockets. It is being consistently
proposed that the Government should set up a structure to launch a sustained
public education campaign in schools and through the press.
In order to understand
the inadequacy of the state budget for immobile national heritage, one should
consider that the competent Agency (Patrimonju Malta) has to deal with a
complex, three-storey underground hypogeum, three large temple sites, four
smaller ones, four networks of catacombs, Roman Baths and a Roman Villa, eleven
Museums, a National Armoury, the Palace of the Roman Catholic Inquisition and
many other locations of lesser import.
Another sore point in
immobile heritage is the old city of Valletta,
declared a world heritage fortified city by UNESCO. Even here, leading NGOs are pressing the
Government for immediate action, maintaining that it is the responsibility of
politicians to give Valletta
the priority in the allocation of human and financial resources which it
deserved.
The problem of lack of
sustainable funds acquires a special economic dimension when one considers that
Malta
has decided to publicize its cultural patrimony for tourist purposes. There has been a definite shift in the past
five years to promote Malta
not as a “sun and sea” destination, but as a “come and see” imperative location
striding five millennia of history at the crossroads of Southern Europe, the
Middle East and Northern Africa.
Public debate is also
concentrating on how to make culture financially viable. It is only recently that efforts have been
expressed to make Malta
a reference for tourism.
For the first time, Malta’s
cultural policy (published only in 2001) has understood the need for the
Government to assist the numerous voluntary cultural workers to create
synergies for the effective promotion of culture, both immobile and
mobile.
There is an incredible
amount of cultural voluntary work done in Malta. Thousands of young people, for example, are
engaged every year in high-quality carnival festivities, a national feature
that is now being seriously evaluated as tourist capital for the winter
season. Another such instance of
voluntary, popular manifestation is related to Holy Week. According to statistics published in Malta
last week, more than 6,500 people were engaged in passion-tide street theatre
in many suburbs and villages.
The problem is that
this rich cultural capital has not been exploited as an effective economic
resource. Not even the National Tourist
Authority evaluated this potential seriously, so much so that it has so far
failed to organize professional cultural/artistic management courses leading to
proper accreditation in the cultural sector.
Malta
desperately needs managerial training in the cultural/artistic field. While
voluntary activity has been very effective to animate the local scene, this is
not enough if Malta
wants to re-dimension its perspective on cultural activity in a professional, trans-national
context.
The Government has
also been calling upon the Catholic Church, still very influential presence in Malta to contribute more effectively towards
cultural interaction and promotion. The
Church possesses a vast cultural heritage and it has now negotiated with the
State for the establishment of a Joint Council to coordinate cultural
interests. As from this year, the
Tourist Authority has been providing modest financial assistance to allow the
Valletta Churches, including the cathedral of St.John, a unique temple built by
the Order of the Knights and enhanced by successive European Grandmasters.
One cannot estimate
the culture scene in Malta
without making reference to the long history of colonialism sustained by the
people. All the powerful dominations of Europe and the Mediterranean have, at
various periods, colonized the archipelago of islands: from the Phoenicians to
the Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans,
Spaniards, Aragonese, Castillians, the Knights of the Order of Rhodes and Jerusalem, the French and finally the British, who ruled
over Malta until the
declaration of Independence
in 1964.
Undoubtedly, this
history of successive conquests has left a rich fabric of mixed cultures. But it has also had psycho-collective
negative effects. The Maltese were slow
in perceiving the essential significance of nationhood. The concept of nation asserts and modifies
itself according to particular historic moments, geo-position as well as linguistic
characteristics, political realities and so on.
For two millennia at least, the Maltese were a colonized people, silent
watchers of their tiny country being traded or fought for in battles and wars
waged by foreign powers.
The people’s own
battle was for survival and how to relate to the new masters every time the
islands were conquered. Such a reality
produced an identity crisis that still has to be resolved. The whole new literary movement that emerged
in Malta after Independence, for
instance, expressed this personal and cultural crisis: Who am I?
Who are we? These were the
dominant questions expressed by the writers of the post-war generation,
including playwrights.
Even today, on the eve
of Malta joining the European
Union, academic correspondents have been asking in the media whether Malta
is a “nationless state”. They are enquiring about national “identity
credentials” in the wake of Malta’s
forthcoming EU membership. The central argument is
that culturally, Malta
has been alienated so much by successive dominations that it ended up waging battle
upon itself: that battle has taken the form of a latter-day “tribalism”,
engaging the two political parties that dominate the local scene, almost
equally.
The process of colonialism
is also seen by several key Maltese intellectuals as having produced a virtual
cultural “schizophrenia”, largely exemplified by the language issue. Malta has a unique Semitic
language, an Arabic legacy that has, extraordinarily, been developed into a
structured, grammatically-functional language written in Latin characters. But many Maltese, especially the young, use a
hybrid brand of English to communicate, especially within circles where social
hegemony is evident. Moreover,
governmental correspondence is still largely conducted in English and many
civil servants write Maltese very incorrectly. Public Broadcasting also suffers from this
alienation: most programmes are American, there is no policy for dubbing or
sub-titling foreign films and several broadcasters are often criticized for
their linguistic incompetence.
The language crisis
has also affected the massive amount of translation work that needs to be
undertaken in view of Malta’s
accession to the European Union, where Maltese has been selected as one of the
official languages. The first official translations were seriously flawed and
this sharpened the criticism against the cultural-education system, for not
producing competent people to do the job correctly.
The language crisis
also hits the theatre sector, where most of the repertoire takes the form of
recycled plays in English. For the
current season, only two Maltese dramatists produced an original play in the
local tongue. A raging controversy in
the Maltese and English press sees this lack of serious native drama as another
symptom of post-colonial inertia. There
is also a resistance from official quarters to create a national drama company:
the argument is that “a national drama company is no longer fashionable.” This has been challenged as an absurd claim
when considered for instance, in the light of the Scottish and Welsh current
movements in favour of national theatre, as well as the establishment of
national drama companies in conflict regions like Palestine
and, this month, Iraq.
The colonialism issue
is still very present in the Maltese media: it is related to anything from
linguistic identity to theatrical expression, from whether the British-awarded
Cross for Bravery (known as the George Cross) on the Maltese national flag
should be removed or whether Malta’s
accession to the European Union constitutes political and cultural colonialism.
One Eurosceptic Member of Parliament
wrote publicly to instigate fear that the policy rituals of the EU will turn
all Maltese, parliamentarians and citizens alike, into “hollow men and
women.” Any example to illustrate massive
paranoia about political and cultural colonialism cannot be sharper than this.
Are there any
plus-points attached to Malta’s
cultural policy?
Indeed, there
are. State policy has declared itself as
inclusive, non-discriminatory, interactive, holistic and
a catalyst for social cohesion. There
are several recent examples of good practice that involve not only the
decentralization of cultural competences for the purpose of democratization,
but also culture as a contributor to other sectorial concerns. Such practices are kept going by very tight
budgets, but the burden is being shared by Education Authorities, the Local Councils
and, not as often as one would wish, the private sector.
Specific cultural
activity in the form of theatre, dance-drama, visual art, music and creative
narratives has been offered, over the past three years, to children, young
people and adults in deprived areas, to persons undergoing rehabilitation
programmes against drugs addiction, to the disabled and to children and
adolescents who landed in Malta
as refugees or irregular immigrants. In other words, to groups on the margin of society.
There is also concern
about a new cultural deficit that could be created among sectors of the
population because of information technology.
Malta
is seen as a perfect springboard for IT initiatives. Early in 2003, the Government embarked on a
long-term relationship with software giant Microsoft in a concerted effort to
use IT as a driver for the economy.
On a popular level,
18% of the population now have a live subscription to the Internet, but government spokespersons have been warning
that “information and communication technology may, through lack of access,
create a new form of discrimination,”
especially since subscription rates are still very high. Moreover, as a Junior Minister at the Social
Policy Ministry put it last month, ownership of a computer is an investment
sometimes out of reach for the poorer families.
On the other hand, the
national Agency for the protection of Heritage has pledged
to turn museums and sites into fully-accessible, interactive,
popular venues and erase the academic, restrictive nature of such sites, in
order to deliver them from the traditionally rigid, “mausoleum” perception people have of them.
Like other countries
accessing the European Union, Malta
will undoubtedly have its teething troubles and concerns, but the success of
the European enterprise should depend on shared experiences and integrated
initiatives. Culture has this singular
quality of improvising essential bridge-work, even when financial constraints
become threatening.
One hopes that “unification
through diversity” is a key phrase that artists and cultural workers in an enlarged
Europe will take to their hearts and do their
utmost to activate, notwithstanding restrictive or prohibitive circumstances. We should also have faith in the cultural
product as a symbol and means of peace-building and conflict prevention, as
indeed expressed by international bodies
like UNESCO (Declaration of the
Principle of International Cultural Cooperation, 1966) and the United Nations
(Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, 1999). We live in a world of increased conflict and
accelerating violence and there is no doubt that we have to discover (or
rediscover) new value systems that express distinctive, spiritual and
dialogical features. Perhaps we can
understand what politicians often fail to understand and fill in the moral
blanks they create.
Mario Azzopardi
Barcelona
16th April 2004
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