As one door closes...

Since I came to live in Valletta 8 years ago, I have never seen this door open. It is the side entrance to the Palace, now the Armoury. In summer in particular, I often walk home around the arcades that surround Independence Square because there is always shade, and then along Old Theatre street past this closed door. Yesterday, the gate was open!

 I ventured in with my grocery bags, past the men standing in wonder looking up at the old clock.

 Inside, people enjoyed this surprising green space that had suddenly opened up to us in the heart of Valletta. The atmosphere was shaded, leisurely, cultural, calm. People sat with children in strollers. Two stone lions in one corner reminded us that we were in Valletta in the middle of a hot summer's day.


Many things have happened in the last few weeks to focus my thinking on open space and culture. Last week, The Times of Malta announced that the Eurobarometer survey had found that Valletta's cultural facilities were ranked last in Europe by residents. Immediately, on-line commentators jumped in to blame or to question the competence of people who live in Valletta to judge cultural facilities. When I commented in terms of a wider understanding of cultural facilities as including the streets, playgrounds, green and blue areas and all the formal and informal spaces where people undertake the daily process of creating their culture and where local residents are often put at the bottom of the list of stakeholders, I was dismissed to go and look up the meaning of cultural facilities in a dictionary.

A day later, the same newspaper reported the wider survey that showed that in fact Valletta comes somewhere in the middle in terms of livability as judged by residents. I've been wondering about what all this means.

"Culture", like open space, is contested. Cultural facilities are constructed to privilege a particular group of people over others. Valletta itself was constructed to privilege "gentlemen" over women, peasants, artisans and Maltese, including the nobility. That culture, of course, has changed. In the19th century, the privileged "cultured" classes moved out of Valletta and left it to the "lower" classes who rented or squatted in the crumbling townhouses or moved into the social housing built after WW2. But the privileged classes still expected to use Valletta as their cultural playground, to drive through its streets and find convenient parking, to shop, to attend the Manoel theatre, to lunch at Casino Maltese, that privileged remnant of the culture of gentlemen. The cultured classes remarked how Valletta was a hub of activity during the day but was dead after the shops closed. What they didn't notice was that after 7.00pm, Valletta was returned to the residents: families hung out in the piazzas, played bingo or bocci on the bastions, caroused in the football supporters clubs and went to bed undisturbed at a reasonable hour because they had to be up for work in the morning.

Now, this separation of the two cultures of Valletta is changing again as the relentless process of gentrification takes hold. Perhaps some of the anger directed by the cultured elite towards Renzo Piano's open air theatre built on the ruins of the Royal Opera House is that this new cultural facility is attracting a different audience that challenges the established view of the nature of culture. And then there is St James Cavalier, now Spazju Kreattiva; Valletta 2018, that is not a cultural facility; the regeneration of Strait St, formerly the red light entertainment district, then a residential area; the restoration of Is-Suq tal-Belt, the old market where some of the men who live in my block kept their butcher shops; MUZA, the former Museum of Fine Art now on the move into Auberge d'Italie; and the Bicceria, the old knights' abattoir, now intended to become a design hub.

I hesitate to say that I straddle the two cultures of Valletta. I am resident in a mixed social housing block in Lower Valletta and, over the course of a lifetime, I have accumulated a lot of cultural capital. I make full use of all the cultural facilities available in Valletta but I also walk the streets with my grocery bags, swim in the Harbour outside the bastions, grumble when my sleep is disturbed by party boats coming in from Sliema, struggle with a helpless grumpiness at cigarette ends dropped in the streets, cars parked on inadequate pavements, rubbish dumped, the smell of piss in doorways and dog shit underfoot. I also listen to my neighbours who tell me that there is nowhere for the children to play, that they are exhausted because they have to look after grandchildren as well as ageing parents, or that they can't afford to buy a flat in Valletta.

Straddling different cultures is often difficult and lonely. But I think that the cultural facilities in Valletta have to help create that bridge. Most have varying degrees of engagement with the local community. Two, MUZA and The Valletta Design Hub, have consciously adopted a process that places the local residents as key stakeholders in the development of their project. MUZA puts story-telling as central to their curatorial practice and have engaged with the local community by inviting residents to choose a painting from the collection, talk about why it's important for them and then see the painting displayed in a public place that has significance for them. Sandro Debono, who is overseeing the shift in location and culture for MUZA, is also enthusiastic about the walk through the courtyard of the Auberge d'Italie, linking La Valette square with Merchants St and thereby opening up to the local community.

The Valletta Design Hub in the area known as the Bicceria in Lower Valletta near Jews' Sally Port has taken this process a step further and seriously engaged with the local residents in the planning of the development. Caldon Mercieca is firmly committed to genuine community consultation using the slow process of knocking on doors, holding street meetings (he uses the term "unconference") and workshops for all those who will be impacted by the introduction of this cultural facility. My hope is that this will lay a foundation for a cultural space that is part of the community rather than a separate, if prestigious, institution.

If you continue along Old Theatre St, past the open door that began this musing, down the side of the old market currently boarded off for restoration, you arrive at St Paul's St and one of two newish zebra crossings.

A resident of St Paul's St tells me that the crossings are the result of pressure from European Union House, located across the street opposite the back of Is-Suq. EU house will be busier during the first half of 2017 when Malta holds the presidency of the European Union and entertains plenty of visitors who will have to walk the streets just as the residents of Valletta. As with most cultural facilities, what is good for visitors should also be good for residents.

This piece has been a few days in the writing and each day, I've called into the courtyard of the Palace Armoury. Already it has changed. The gracious seating has been removed and barriers put in to guide people to the box office and keep them away from the work going on in the old entrance off St George square. I just hope that when that work is complete, this cultural facility keeps the side door open to enhance the arcade past the National library and allow residents to enjoy this green haven as they walk through.