MALTA’S CULTURAL POLICY

Mario Azzopardi

IN a contribution made to The Sunday Times (24 October, 2004) Dr Vicki-Ann Cremona, at present Maltese Ambassador for France, claimed that Malta’s Cultural Policy gives a very good overview of the history of the arts in Malta “but does not really lay down any explicit plan or direction to foster the arts”. In a reply to her article, Mario Azzopadi, coordinator and author of the Policy document, laid down the facts.

Malta’s Cultural Policy document, issued as a national discussion paper in 2001, should not be confused with a development strategy with costed and targeted plans and time-tables. Development plans form part of terms subscribed to by national cultural entities and executive agencies, institutions that were pointedly heralded by the Policy under review.

The planning narrative should take its cue from visions and priorities clearly laid down in the Cultural Policy. It is normal to expect that strategies by the respective institutions formed by the State to handle the cultural product should be policy-aligned. Cultural entities should move to action baselines, targets, implementation, output and outcomes.

Malta’s Cultural Policy prioritizes on matters relating to the democratic renewal of culture, devolution of power, accessibility, widespread engagement and partnership with Local Councils, NGOs, collective and individual enterprising. It also expresses the imperative to harness culture with education. The Policy regards living culture as “a movement that redirects itself from social narrowscape to broadscape,” so as to impact communal creativity, participation, inclusion and change. It also declares that Malta subscribes to the notion of culture as the expression of far-reaching societal and economic trends, including perspectives for tourism. At the same it recognizes the need to take into account the recent evolvement of the notion of cultural workers and cultural industries.

Other priorities underpinned by Malta’s Cultural Policy relate to the need to regard creative expression as an intrinsic and irreplaceable instrument that should be fully recognized and invigorated, so as to break the cycle of failure in values. More concretely, the Policy paper had promised the setting up of structures such as the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts and Heritage Malta, besides having specified the operational role of Malta’s Centre for Creativity at St. James Cavalier. The Policy paper also urged theatrical institutions (including the Theatre Studies Programme at the University) to synergize and assume joint responsibility for the evolvement of native, Maltese theatre, motivating it with a relevant, critical idiom that interrogates society.

Malta’s Cultural Policy was assessed as “high quality” material by the Everitt Report (2001) commissioned by the Directorate of Culture and Natural heritage of the Council of Europe. The Everitt Report on its part made no less than 63 strategic recommendations based on the “comprehensive (policy) document on the current situation of Maltese culture.”

An official document dated 13 July 2001, received at the Policy Unit at the Ministry of Education and Culture and signed by Dr Wolfdietrich Elbert, Head of the Cultural Policy Division at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg described Malta’s Cultural Policy document as “an outstanding contribution” that “casts a precise and sometimes critical view at the situation of culture (in Malta), does not hesitate to identify lacunae and proposes appropriate remedies.”

The Policy document is made up of sixteen exhaustive chapters, all of which denote a shift towards a process of devolution and communal interaction. The Policy was formulated after a long period of consultation with many different bodies and individuals. It also took into account the proceedings and conclusions reached at a National Symposium on Culture and the Arts held in 1999 to boost the reinvention of Malta’s cultural perceptions.

MARIO AZZOPARDI