Creating Malta Towards 2020 and Beyond (2015) by Arts Council Malta, Valletta, Malta

The Arts Council Malta, previously known as the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts (MCCA), was renamed on the 12th of May 2015 through Act 2015 of the Maltese Parliament. The Council is an arm’s length body that executes Maltese Government intervention in the field of culture. Under its renewed mandate, the Arts Council Malta functions through three separate directorates: Strategy, Festivals, and Corporate affairs.

In December 2015, the Strategy Directorate of the Arts Council Malta published its Create 2020 Strategy as a way to communicate its plans for the period 2016–2020. The document covers both the arts and the creative industries by focusing primarily on creation. The document comprises five goals, nine strategic tools, and a total of seventy actions that it is hoped will make the goals reality. The goals are to: (1) nurture creative potential; (2) invest in artistic excellence; (3) connect Malta to the international artistic community; (4) provide more opportunities for people to engage in creativity; and (5) build the capacity of public cultural institutions. The tools to do this are funding, brokerage, education, training, research, communication, internationalization, business development, and community exchange.

My aim here is to draw up a few remarks in the margins of this document. This, in order to raise questions about what it aims to do and how this could be done. I do want to stress that I provide a real outside perspective. I am neither Maltese, nor have I ever visited the country. I thus try to understand the context in which arts and culture are created in Malta based on one single document. And my remarks should in no way be read as a critique of the document based on my knowledge of the arts and cultural sector in the country. However, while not rooted in my knowledge of Malta, this review builds on my continuing interest in the ways small (and peripheral) countries try to carve out their space in an increasingly global cultural sphere.

Malta has an interesting time ahead, and the Create 2020 Strategy suggests optimism about the years to come. Between 18 and 21 October 2016, Valletta will host the 7th World Summit on Arts and Culture.¹ And in 2018, the Maltese capital will bear the title of European Capital of Culture, as Valletta2018.² In the light of these events, the Arts Council Malta has both the opportunity and challenge to articulate a clear vision for the future of artistic creation.

It is thus not surprising that the Arts Council’s document is a courageous one, as it sets broad ambitious goals. It paints a bright future, as the document is meant to help “position Malta in 2020 as a vibrant and diverse centre of creativity” (p. 12), which would lead to the following achievements:

• An increase in the number of people with creative potential active in creative professions;

• An increase in the number of young people studying the arts who are equipped with skills to manage their own business;

• Increased clustering and networking;

• More temporary and permanent spaces for creation and co-creation;

• Investments in creative start-ups;

• Business development training and mentoring;

• Increased private investment;

• Alternative sources of funding;

• Increased collaborations between public cultural organizations and creative entrepreneurs;

• Increased international activity and market access;

• Closer collaborations between higher education institutions, public agencies and industry. (p. 12)

Particularly at a time when public funding for art and culture is under pressure throughout Europe, the Create 2020 Strategy suggests considerable investment in Maltese arts. Yet, it is unclear if this investment (for the document does explicitly not speak of subsidies) constitutes an increase over previous years or not. While the Arts Council spent a total of €820,000 in grants in 2015 (p. 14), and the plan is to invest on average €2,000,000 per annum over the period 2016–2020 (p. 26), the document suggests a sharp increase. But a clear-cut comparison is difficult, as the Strategy does not include a systematic overview of all planned ‘investment’ toward 2020. Moreover, while the document provides ‘snapshots’ of data and trends in the Maltese sector, there is no table that gives a systematic year-to-year overview. While there could well be a real increase in public spending, this remains difficult to discern, thereby casting a shade on the otherwise bright document.

One striking feature of the document is the cursory engagement with Valletta2018. While there is mention of working toward a legacy program with the Festivals Directorate, the strategic position of Valletta2018 in relation to the Create 2020 Strategy remains somewhat vague. Other cities bearing the title European Capital of Culture have seen significant public spending on cultural infrastructure and artistic programming. It is surprising to see so little engagement with this in the strategy document. I wonder how the investments of the Arts Council will both work with this year-long event and how it will aim to capitalize on the broader investments in the cultural infrastructure and artistic programming throughout that period. There certainly is an opportunity for the Arts Council to work toward ensuring a great legacy of Valletta2018, but right now, the question is perhaps what the sector stakeholders want that legacy to be.

The ownership of strategic documents is vital to their implementation. This is why the Arts Council has involved some 330 stakeholders in developing the Create 2020 Strategy. Although the document does not specify the breakdown of the group of consulted stakeholders, it later breaks down its main stakeholders into three groups: creative professionals, public cultural organizations, and communities. It is great to hear that the sector has been heard and contributed to the strategy that affects them all. Yet, in spite of their involvement, there seems to be little trace of this in the actual Strategy. The document neither quotes any stakeholders, nor does it outline how different stakeholders may vary in their take on different aspects of the strategy; the Arts Council Malta seems to have resolved all contradictions and tensions between stakeholders in articulating one unified message. This raises a few questions. What do these stakeholders perceive to be current challenges? What ideas and hopes do they cherish for the future of artistic and cultural creation in Malta? And how diverse were the stakeholders’ voices? The Create 2020 Strategy is to the point and clear. But given its explicit focus on ‘brokerage’ as one of the strategic tools, one wonders if the Arts Council Malta mainly wants to act as a broker between different stakeholders, or if it aims to take a more vulnerable position by trying to understand the multiplicity of voices that surely exist in relation to its own goals and tools? Cultural policy debates see a move toward participatory processes in policy-making (including strategic thinking), which signals a shift from consultation to brokerage between different parties: “Rather than stranding themselves on the high moral ground, as elitist and self-interested critics of political programs, arts bureaucrats, artsworkers, and advocates may be able to position themselves as experts between public opinion and politics” (Besch & Minson, 2001, p. 64). While the Arts Council Malta (perhaps incautiously) pays lip service to this shift, it falls short in critically implementing its principles.

Moreover, as Malta clearly gears up to convince the world it has a few exciting years of cultural action ahead, the European Union is going through drastic changes. The monetary instability of the past years has caused economic turmoil. And conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean has led to an increase in asylum-seekers. The Brexit debates and referendum are exemplary of a growing group of skeptical politicians and citizens who question or oppose further integration of the European Union. While these debates are not central to the Strategy of the Arts Council Malta, the outcomes of these debates will impact the country. Hence my questions: in its drive toward greater internationalization, how will Malta position itself in the European Union and the Mediterranean? What kinds of roles can arts and culture play in this regard? And how do different (groups of) stakeholders in the Maltese arts and creative sector differ in their views on this?

Returning to the specifics of the Strategy, it is remarkable that the Art Council’s engagement with education is bold and ambitious. At a time when art and creativity is losing ground in public education in many countries, as Martha Nussbaum laments in her book Not for Profit (2012), the Arts Council Malta proposes to strengthen creation in the country by better incorporating arts education in its school curricula. Proposed actions include investment in “the cultural participation programme to ensure that every secondary school student will experience a minimum of one artistic production a year produced by creative professionals and presented through a curated programme” (p. 33). The focus on education suggests a holistic understanding of what it means to develop a strategy for creation over the long term, precisely because the document recognizes that “addressing this challenge requires authorities, schools, parents and educators to collectively commit to a stronger educational culture that considers the arts as an integral component of upbringing and development” (p. 32). But it also echoes a humanistic view of education that places Bildung at its core. While the precise actions under this umbrella could have been more articulate – as benchmarks and measurable objectives are lacking – the spirit signals a commitment that plans toward 2020, but thinks well beyond that horizon.

In sum, the Arts Council Malta has taken its renaming and renewed mandate in 2015 as a starting point for an ambitious strategy for the period 2016–2020. The resulting document outlines a clear vision (“placing the arts and creativity at the heart of Malta’s future”) and mission (“we invest in the cultural and creative sectors to achieve higher levels of excellence and develop Malta’s creative ecology”) (p. 4). While somewhat compromised in its ambitions due to the lack of clarity about numbers, the lack of explicit reference to the issues raised throughout the consultation process, and the limited reference to Valletta2018, the Strategy has the advantage of breaking down this vision and mission into seventy actions. Now the perennial policy conundrum remains: how to work out which proposed actions will see the light of day and which won’t?

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