A fund of €750,000 has been launched today, to assist local authorities in their cultural events held between January 2018 and December 2020.
In light of the ten year anniversary of the culture fund, Parliamentary Secretary Stefan Buontempo, together with Valletta 2018 Foundation Chairman Jason Micallef and representative from the Malta Tourism Authority Edward Zammit, today launched the fund in the hope of giving life to projects in a more 'strategic' manner.
Earlier today, Sliema local council announced that they will not be holding the much-loved Sliema Arts Festival event this year, due to a delay in funds. With this in mind, Mr Buontempo explained how this three-year-long fund will prevent situations like these from re-occurring.
The fund may cover up to 100% of the total costs of each project, up to a maximum of €45,000 over three years. Local councils wishing to benefit from the fund will need to submit a three-year strategic plan.
From the perspective of Valletta 2018, Mr Micallef said that it would be "silly to work on cultural events only in Valletta," and stressed the importance of the promotion of cultural events in all other regions. Referring to the three year timeframe of the fund, Mr Micallef said that promoting Malta's culture (such as in the case of V18) should not only be a "one-off event", and promoting culture should "not stop after 2018, and be look backed at with a sense of nostalgia," but should "pave the road to future cultural events too".
With this idea in mind, he proposed that every three years, Malta should have a 'national cultural capital'. He also mentioned that in 2025, Malta should start thinking of possible villages as candidates for the European capital of culture 2030. This proposal was recommended to political parties in order for them to include it in their electoral manifestos, and has proven successful in the UK and in other countries.
Mr Zammit, representative from the MTA, said that knowing the cultural events for the next three years would help the tourism industry promote Malta in fairs abroad by knowing programmes "in advance". "Tourists who come to Malta look for events outside the swimming pool of their hotel, by integrating with local communities," he said. "We don't need to 'Disneyfy' what we have to offer because it's already authentic, we already have the backdrop," he concluded.
The Local Government Fund 2018-2020 is being funded by the Parliamentary Secretariat for Local Government together with the Malta Tourism Authority, with the support of Arts Council Malta, the Culture Directorate and the Local Government Division.