Articles written by

Karsten Xuereb

Volume 15-Issue on socially engaged art and global challenges december 2021

Intersectional Dialogues around Cultural Policy in Malta

This article seeks to understand how social engagement and policy change in the cultural sector in Malta can cater for the needs of various individuals and communities, particularly minorities, based on the island. As it contextualises local cultural policy in the broad theoretical field of intersectionality, the article articulates a general backdrop linking geographical and political dimensions to the cultural scene and specific minorities in Malta. It then presents an outline of the recent National Cultural Policy issued by the Ministry for the National Heritage, the Arts and Local Government in 2021, giving an overview of some of the policy’s references to social inclusion and cultural access in the work conducted by various public stakeholders in the cultural and educational sectors. Finally, it describes and analyses data collected from two meetings held with various stakeholders representing different sectors in the country in order to elicit some conclusions about the significance of socially engaged arts, training and other perceived needs in the sector.
28 min read
Volume 15-Issue on socially engaged art and global challenges december 2021

Social change through cultural enterprise in Malta: a critical assessment of a nascent field

This article adopts a cultural policy perspective to address diversity and sustainable development in the context of cultural enterprise in Malta, where projects and scholarly research supported by European funded programmes in the promotion and protection of diversity in local and regional environments are at an early stage. This article first argues that engaging in a critical assessment of the field is timely because of the growing importance that matters of diversity and sustainability are having in the light of the cultural-driven and -led models employed that are having significant impact on human and natural ecosystems; this is particularly due to a booming population that is becoming more diversified, a greater economic activity especially related to tourism and travel and the consistent rise in the demand of creative products and services. In this light, references to the research conducted by the project Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS) will support this argument. It then argues that cultural operators and educators who are drawn to this area of interest and whose work consists of evaluating the scene and proposing novel ways of collaboration and research contribute towards building sustainable models of operation. The methodology applied is based on a pertinent literature review and observations made directly in the field of practice.