If anything sails the seas, it can fall prey to natural disaster or be felled by human error, or a combination of the two. Costa Concordia was off its scheduled course by sailing far nearer to the isle of Giglio, just off the Tuscan coast.  But it transpires that similar unscheduled routes in these waters had been plied before by cruise ships of the same size and class and just months before. Did navigational equipment fail to detect the rocks; did the captain ignore any automated warnings; did systems fail? There’s a vast amount of technical detail that the enquiries will plough through, quite apart from eye witness accounts. Nothing is clear cut.

History is littered with such seafaring tales. Recently, there was news that the original H.M.S. Victory of the British Navy (the predecessor of Admiral Lord Nelson’s ‘Victory’) is to be salvaged from the seabed in the English Channel around 100km off where it was thought to have sunk in 1744.  For nearly three centuries, naval history had cast doubt on its commanding officer’s ability to navigate, saying that the ship was well off course when it sank in a storm near Alderney.  Found around two years ago by the Odyssey Marine Exploration team, the wreck lies where the course was set and some 300 years of rumour about the ability of its commanding officer, Admiral Sir John Balkin, are now laid to rest.

Who knows how history will judge this tragedy.  But there is one aspect of the affair that is understandable, particularly is you live on small islands yourself.  The Costa Concordia’s unscheduled, and this time allegedly unauthorised route close to Giglio, was apparently in order for the ship to ‘salute’ a former colleague who lived on the tiny island.  The folk of Giglio, an isle of some 700 houses, would probably all have felt a kinship with the Costa Crociere liners. One of their own had been a crew member.  How proud then to see a Costa liner in full glory, lights ablaze across the water, larger than life and nearer to home than usual.

Anyone who’s seen the giant cruise liners almost on eye level with the Barrakka Gardens in Valletta or seen them enter or leave Grand Harbour, deep sonorous siren sounding, will feel a frisson of excitement – however many times you’ve witnessed it as a resident here.  The feeling that the cruise ships ‘belong’ here, to us, and are part of the life blood of Malta runs deep.

Malta too often celebrates it locals who’ve made it out there, internationally; those who’ve hit the bigger time. We can understand, if not sanction, Captain Schettino’s deviation on the night of the 13th, that was intended to show that even in a cruise industry dominated by two megalithic international players, there’s still a local heart to the business.  No wonder then that some reports show Giglio residents deeply shocked – it’s not a tragedy that happened to play out on their island, it’s a tragedy in which they all feel they share, deeply.

Photo: courtesy of Robert G. Henderson

Just to add to this medley of historic celebratory dates, we can include a parish feast day (festa) as some four localities celebrate the feast of Our Lady as a Child (Maria Bambina/Our Lady of Victory).  To help coordinate things here a little, the religious feast conveniently changed its age-old name to the feast of ‘Il-Madonna tal-Vitorja’ in a mix of history and religious fervour following the end of the Great Siege of 1565.

But who cares about the history and religious history when you’ve the Regatta!

The 8th September is synonymous in most locals’ minds with the battle of the Grand Harbour oarsmen as they pitch brawn (and brain, in tactics and staying power) in the ritual Dhajsa rowing competitions.

Teams from Valletta, Vittoriosa, Senglea, Kalkara, Cospicua Marsaxlokk and Marsa have been practising for months to ensure they make a fighting attempt to win the Regatta.  The link with all the historic celebratory reasons above? Well, there’s the fighting spirit (reminiscent of the Great Siege) and the zeal and passion (similar to the levels that go into parish festas).

So, while some reasons for public holidays can be mundane or irrelevant to today’s society, at least 8th September has a bit more panache than most. And it’s still a day of victory for some.

Photo: Ian Oakhill

Valletta is becoming more lively in the evenings in the past year or so. Visitors linger to dine and locals from elsewhere come for arts events and decamp to wine bars after. There’s still a way to go before Valletta has an evening vibe like most European capitals. So it’s little surprise that the Malta Arts Festival opens this year with an attempt to get us active in Valletta: the Strada Wine & food festival that takes place along South Street and Strait Street 1, 2 & 3 July from 19.00.

It’s a popular dairy date: this year sees the 6th Festival Strada, one of the most sought-after events of the arts festival and a summer precursor in a way to October’s Notte Bianca. Strada is known for its relaxed atmosphere which encourages us to sup and sip as we stroll along enjoying open-air music and visual arts. When Strada is over, we need to think of more reasons to go to Valletta in the evening; that would be the real legacy of Strada, which is another of those annual one-off events.

Entrance is free. More information, see Malta Arts Festival.

Photo: by Rene Rossignaud courtesy of Malta Council for Culture & the Arts.

Up to now, we’ve seen the bid have its official launch and its public info day. Now, it’s time for the podium speakers to turn the tables and ask us as citizens what our vision for Valletta 2018 is. The vehicle to do this? ‘Imagine 18‘, a public conference and series of workshops on 20 – 21 June.

‘Imagine 18′ is being organised by the Valletta 2018 Foundation, a new entity set up to formulate and implement the Valletta 2018 vision and strategy as an ECoC. Its remit is to see Valletta 2018 as far more than a flash in the pan for one year. The vision has to translate into structures, activities, initiatives that live on beyond 2018 and bring demonstrable benefits to, say, the educational sphere, our quality of life, our cultural calendar, our communities and so on.

Valletta 2018 Project Coordinator Karsten Xuereb says the conference marks a significant “next step” in the European Capital of Culture bid process: “The event is a first opportunity to take on board people’s vision for Valletta 2018, which covers the whole of the Maltese Islands, and to define its legacy. Public participation lies at the core of the European Capital of Culture initiative and I have no doubt we will gain a wealth of valuable insights and material from the discussions.”

How to Participate
The event’s thrust is the morning of themed workshops on the 21 June. These see the public (that means YOU if you want to be involved!) join invited participants from key sectors. More than half the 250 conference places are open to the public and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Where?
The conference is launched at the Manoel Theatre, Valletta, 4.30pm on 20 June, and continues next day at Verdala Palace, Rabat, with the themed working groups. You give your preferred choice of workshop on registering. For full programme, see contact details below.

For further information on the event and details of the eight workshop themes and to register for the conference, please contact: Sylvana Mercieca on tel: 2291 5036 or by email: sylvana.mercieca@gov.mt.

See also
Imagine 18 on Facebook
Valletta 2018 on Twitter

Photo of Valletta: courtesy Leslie Vella.

This first Valletta Photography Festival is the start of a new way of appreciating contemporary photography in Malta and the work of numerous talented, professional, semi-professional and upcoming amateur photographers on the islands or with close links to them. The duo behind it are photographer Patrick Fenech and multimedia creative Vince Briffa.

The festival is more than a one-off event; it’s being created to inspire us in Malta to view photography as the diverse, fine art form it is. Malta has no photographic museum although it has a wealth of photographic heritage (see our post on the Richard Ellis Archives, a priceless collection dating from 1880s charting also the pioneering of early photographic techniques in Malta).

The festival is a step towards establishing more recognition for photography on the islands and giving it the place it deserves. An outcome that the organises and practitioners would like to see is the setting up of a Malta Photo Museum as a permanent gallery space and a centre for education and networking.

The programme says that the medium’s “…easy access and wide use has democratised the practice of photography, bringing professional picture-taking skills to the masses. This has spurred practitioners to take photography to another level and produce work with an intellectual content, worthy of attention and investigation”.

Clearly, this is what lies behind the initiative. From personal experience, I know a lot of photographers in Malta who should strictly be called ‘hobbyists’ or ‘amateurs’ but whose outputs are anything but haphazard snapshots. We’ve been lucky enough to feature their work here on Malta InsideOut. As you can see from the header photos on nearly all our articles, and on our Flickr stream, there’s a lot of serious talent around in Malta, and among visitors to the Islands. The Valletta Photography Festival is Malta’s first defined step towards putting photography on our local map.

Festival Info
The festival website has full details, but here we list the exhibition spaces:

10 Maltese Contemporary Photographers : Auberge d’Italie
You are Man? – You are Woman?, French Connection : St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity
Early Developments of Photography – St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity.
‘Twanny Salon’ Photography by Toni Mckay : Covered Market (is-Suq), (behind the Grand Master’s Palace).
Images on Stone : projection at 2/22 dine | music | culture, (under St Michael’s Bastion).

For photographers taking part, see here.

I won’t miss City Gate. But I do wonder about the next edifice to rise up in this space. Malta’s new parliament.

You can see its foundations in the photo below. I feel it’s a shame we can’t have an open square; a precious green lung for Valletta instead. Even with the airiness the parliament is being designed, we won’t have this view of St James Cavalier, standing proud watching over Valletta’s entrance. So, catch it while you can, glimpsed over the hoardings.

Some 60 or so MPs, admin staff and offices could have been housed in disused, grand spaces like St Elmo. A prime site at Valletta’s entrance will be used now by a minority. Obviously if you’re in power you can’t grant yourself an office where you like. Let’s think more positively about it though; a new parliament perhaps as the symbol of a more modern-thinking and forward-facing Malta? Then again, it might be a face-lift to old agendas.

Rising like Phoenix from the ashes. Malta's new parliament foundations.

Photos: courtesy, David Pisani, Transit.

Fit for a king - concept luxury stays in an old Valletta house.

What have the Oscar-winning film and Valletta, Malta’s capital got in common? A wall. A wall of distressed plaster bearing the scars of the fads and fashion in paint colours of decades past. You saw it first in the somewhat run-down, Harley Street basement practice of King George VI’s speech therapist, Lionel, played by Geoffrey Rush. Now, you can get to see its Doppelgänger in a setting far removed: a designer-renovated house that’s a fascinating place to stay in Valletta.

It’s in St Lucy Street, and it’s the kind of place that’s making Valletta quite a sexy, insider destination. A Maltese house – historic, slightly worn at the edges, a little bit of the old mixed with the new. Distressed original walls preserved for their beauty are combined with sumptuous fabrics and contemporary, designer furniture and lamps. Located, with ironic juxtaposition, in the old quarter of the town, where the windows and balconies are festooned with the day’s washing, hanging out like street decorations ready for a parade.

This Valletta house, with its peeling paint is reminiscent of the faded charm of Lionel’s room. What also strikes a chord with the film set is the main bedroom’s ornate Venetian headboard upholstered in silk which stands in similar dramatic contrast to the raw walls as the film’s elegant, gilt settee.

These is more to this Malta connection with George VI than the similarity between a film set and these walls though. George VI awarded the Maltese Islands the George Cross in April 1942; Britain’s highest civil decoration (now on display down the road in Valletta at the National War Museum, Fort St Elmo). A sister house, also a marvel of renovation and luxury, has a picture of King George VI in pride of place.

We’ll keep you posted on this hidden gem of a stay in Valletta when it’s open for business!

Valletta in TRANSIT: down with the 20th century, up with 21st Century and long live the C16th?

The Renzo Piano project to redevelop Valletta’s city gate area has proved somewhat controversial even now that it’s well under way. Fast forward a few years though and imagine the development done and people going about their lives within it. What will remain in our memories of what’s there now (just) and how will we use the city gate spaces differently? What social changes will the new architecture bring? And will they be for better or worse?

The TRANSIT project – a collaboration among academics and creatives – aims to help us find out. We talk to one of its members, David Pisani, about TRANSIT. David is one of Malta’s foremost photographers and lives in Valletta. Many of his photos of the city documenting its changes were chosen to form part of the French National Collection. He is renowned for his works capturing architecture and cities – in particular his porfolios ‘Vanishing Valletta’, and of Dubai.

Q. You have long documented Valletta (over some 20 years). When you published your collection ‘Vanishing Valletta’ in 2007, you said that perhaps it was time to move your lens on from the city. A kind of closure on Valletta. What drew you back to documenting the Valletta of today?

I keep saying that, then I keep going back to the site. The changes around city gate, which is what TRANSIT is focusing on are a huge change for Valletta and I wanted to be there to document them.

Q. TRANSIT is billed as an ‘urban art study on the social and urban changes in the Valletta city gate project’. What exactly does that mean?

TRANSIT is not only about documenting – the central issues of the project deal with urban change, how they effect us, the way we interact with the city, and what their long term consequences may be. The health and longevity of a city depends on good urban planning and we felt that the Renzo Piano Project had been shrouded in so many petty political issues as to whether to rebuild the opera house and so on that the people who actual use city gate every day and the life that revolves around the site were completely ignored.

It’s an urban art study because we want to use art to create an awareness of the changes that are occuring; many of them are not about structural change, which is the obvious part but about a more complex change, or dialogue that goes on between the city and its inhabitants and visitors. The process of demolition is one of the key topics we are working on, on the blog we called it “Temporary Ruins”, and we look at how buildings take on transient forms of beauty as they are demolished, brief yet significat moments in the life of a building which, unless captured photographically, are lost forever.

We also ask questions about how demolitions effect our memory of a particular site, do we change as structures change? At what point does nostalgia set in? Is a site capable of preserving memory?

Q. What of Valletta’s claim to be a ‘city’? Malta is after all often called a city-state as Valletta has been the lifeblood of the islands.

Valletta is the capital city not because of its size but because of the social and political commitments it has been bestowed with. We make a point of this in one of the TRANSIT promotional cards where we quote Aristotle who said that ‘a great city is not to be confounded with a populous one’, which means scale is not an issue. Valletta is small but is has the same role and responsibilities to represent the nation as do Paris and London and Tokyo.

Q. TRANSIT sees you – the photographer – collaborate with an anthropologist, an artist and a film maker. Your partners also include the architectural practice behind City Gate. A real multi-disciplinary team of creatives. What combined ‘outputs’ are you generating and for whom and why?

Yes, this is a multi disciplinary project but all the participants are doing what they do best…in my case photography! The architects are instrumental in giving us the knowledge of what is going on inside the project, the design aspects and the demolition processes. We intend to have an exhibition of our work at the end of this year/beginning 2012 and we will also be publishing a book on the work we achieve. We hope the project will enlighten people to look at their urban realities with a greater sense of observation and not just at the bricks and mortar changes.

Q. Is TRANSIT neutral – a mere documenter of the evolution of Valletta as the new city gate area takes shape – or is it acting as a commentator?

We are politically neutral but we have our own ideas of how our cities can be improved and how the city dweller can also aspire to a better quality of life. The blog plays an important part in sharing our ideas as we look at urban change in other cities around the world and post comments on these, always with a reference to what is happening around city gate.

Q. What are your personal goals with TRANSIT? Does it signal a change in your own professional career?

No, not at all, it’s just an extension of what I do. I think that Valletta will change drastically because of the Renzo Piano Project and I want to catch it before it’s gone, much as I have done with the rest of Vanishing Valletta.

Q. What should we have asked you?

Why has such an important project largely ignored the social impact it will have?

TRANSIT is very much in favour of the Renzo Piano Project however the whole ordeal of getting it approved (which took almost 15 years) resulted in the project being Lost In Translation and the citizens and visitors who ultimately will inhabit the site (and the city as a whole) have been for the most part ignored. Or someone has simply assumed that everyone will be happy with the final result because nobody loved city gate anyway so anything was going to be better than that. This is a significant “blunder” because there is a whole life of commuters, hawkers, hanger-ons, bus drivers and more that bustles around the site. A closer study of the designs reveals that most of this will be simply removed, without questioning what the consequences of such a Hausmanian clean-slate approach will be.

Stay updated with the project through its blog: http://transitproject.tumblr.com

Photo: David Pisani

Malta's contemporary craft scene is all about hobbyists becoming little entrepreneurs

Malta Inside Out went to Patches Artisan Market in Valletta yesterday. It was the perfect antidote to a cold, wet, blustery Sunday morning in spring. Patches, now in its 5th edition, is the brainchild of Denise Scicluna, and co-helper print and web designer Jimmy Grima. A year or so back, Denise thought that crafts people like her needed a bit more of a showcase for their wares. Quiet, passionate hobbyists and budding entrepreneurs in the creative field generally can’t afford shop units and don’t have the funds for much marketing. Patches gives them a chance to stand up and be counted, and appreciated. Judging by the crowds there when it opened at 10.30, it’s become a calendar event.

It’s been held so far in Valletta – winter months in the 19th century undercover market in Merchant’s Street; in summer, you’ll find it in Upper Barrakka Gardens. Patches has caught the imagination and is also spawning business ideas. Several stall holders today were there having gained inspiration from previous Patches to try their hand at making a hobby into little earner.

The founding duo also want to make sure Patches isn’t only about home-baked goodies and jewelry, which were well represented this time, and all selling well. Jimmy says that it’s still evolving and that future Patches might include more from the arts’ scene like amateur film makers; so expect some installations or entertainment perhaps. No doubt the next Patches, probably in June, will have more to draw the crowds. It’s heartening to see Malta’s crafts forging ahead and being about more than just traditional filigree, pottery, lace and glass. We hope some small businesses do get going on the back of it.

This short clip will give you a feel for the atmosphere and crafts on sale today.

More on Patches, on Facebook and its website.

Photo: left to right: Bagging Cakes; The Glorious Greens; and Soap Cafe.

Everybody's watching someone at the masked Nadur carnival

Malta’s Carnival 2012 runs 17 – 21 February.  See the main Valletta Carnival programme 2012 here.  For activities happening around Malta, see Carnival in the Villages activities. 

Already shops are advertising kids’ costumes and masks flutter in the wind, tied up outside the sell-it-all corner shops.  No sooner is the festive season over than the next occasion to purchase is up and running.

If you’ve children, carnival coincides with school half-terms and kids always leap at the chance to have a holiday and get parents to spend. Carnival has always been a time for extravagance though, throughout the centuries…

Carnival’s history in Malta is well documented here. It was a key festivity in the religious calendar in Malta under the Knights of St John. While encouraged at first, its growing licentiousness, rowdiness, brawls and wild festivities in general made some Grand Masters curtail and even censure it in various periods.

Certainly, it has included elements that might make today’s kids pale as they make their annual and harmless trek mid-term to Valletta to see the floats in their ‘grand défilé, with the King Carnival pride of place. Carnival is centred on Valletta, where the city gate was demolished in the late 1950s, as urban legend has it, to build one high and wide enough for floats to pass through! The new Renzo Piano city gate to be will no doubt have factored in carnival’s needs!

Some aspects of the darker sides of carnival’s history – the macabre, lewd and grotesque – live on. The Nadur carnival in Gozo, is one of the only surviving spontaneous (rather than totally organised) carnivals today, and definitely includes some blacker moments, though probably none as vicious as those in the times of the Knights. Recent years have seen some of the revellers, who had dressed as nuns – and one as Jesus, hauled up in the courts for violating a ban on vilifying the Catholic Religion.

If you do delve into the history of Malta’s carnival though, you’ll find the debate about its returning to its roots (whatever they really were) has come up time and again over the centuries. No single era seems to have harnessed carnival and avoided its propensity to surprise, defy, and live on!

For children though, carnival is an annual and predictable event. It’s a time to not wear school uniform, and to eat a gooey mound of prinjolata (a carnival-time cake of sponge, cream, citrus peel, glace fruits, biscuits and more calorific things) and to enjoy the organised processions in Valletta.

Carnival Programmes 2012:

Main carnival activities, Valletta: Carnival programme 2012.

Carnival in the Villages activities.

Top Photo: Courtesy of Obs1