The photo is the centre piece of the mosaic floor at Domus Romana by Mdina gate.
This post is about the National Forum on Intercultural Dialogue that I went to yesterday at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta. I am starting to appreciate that St James Cavalier is a significant hub of arts and cultural activities in Malta. Sarah Spiteri, the violinist who leads the concert series at St Catherine of Italy, is based at St James Cavalier and indeed features in a short documentary that has been produced there about the EU year of creativity, 2008.
That reminds me that the concert on Thursday was German Baroque for flute and harpsichord with Silvio Zammit on flute and Ramona Zammit Formosa on harpsichord. It was an excellent concert even though both musicians were battling with colds. The court of Frederick the Great enabled many musicians to flourish and we heard pieces by Fred himself, Telemann, CPE Bach, Handel, and JS Bach.
The forum was the summarising event for the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue which was coordinated in Malta by St James Cavalier. It was opened by Dolores Cristina, Minister for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, who, like several other politicians who were present at first, disappeared as soon as she had given her speech. The session before coffee was chaired by Dr Mark Anthony Falzon, Head of Sociology at Uni of Malta. He did a great job of summarising the contributions of Prof. Paul Clough, Head of Anthropology at Uni of Malta who gave an interesting perspective as an Anglo-American-Maltese and Dr Katrine Camilleri, a lawyer with the Jesuit Refugee Services.
Paul Clough spoke about the significance of humour, music and dance in building bridges between cultures. None of the speakers used terms like integration but rather emphasised respect for diversity and the building of links between difference. Paul Clough mentioned two points that have stayed in my mind. One was a personal anecdote about how playing with words to bring out humour can make us feel momentarily more alive.
The other point about age and cultural diversity needs more expansion. Drawing on his own experience as a young adult establishing himself as an academic in Malta, he compared his own experience in building strong links with Maltese people, with that of his parents who tended to stick with people from their own English background. He then generalised to suggest that whilst younger adults enjoy looking out for cultural diversity, older adults seek cultural similarity. My own experience indicates that it is more complex.
As a young woman living in Bahamas I tended to hang out with other English teachers from the Bahamian school where I taught Bahamian children. I remained an ex-pat socialising mostly with other ex-pats. I think the workplace, marital status and the structure of possible links between a local community and a visiting 'foreigner' determines how we relate to a host country rather than age. Certainly in Malta today, older English 'couples' tend to hang out with other older English couples and I think there are plenty of remnants of colonial culture influencing the relationships between older English and Maltese people. But as an older Anglo-Australian returning to Malta and deciding to come and live here more permanently, I find that I am more open than I have ever been to Maltese culture and the Maltese people.
After our coffee break, we divided into four workshops to focus on local communities, education, employment and the arts. I chose the latter which was well facilitated by a young man, Caldon Mercieca from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. Our discussion settled around three areas in terms of how the arts might build bridges between diverse cultures: public art, community art, and artist to artist relationships.
I have to go and hang out my washing and prepare to go walking this afternoon from Naxxar so will publish this and then add some more later.
Sunday afternoon and I've just got back from the Sunday concert at St Catherine of Italy. Today, I was a little late arriving because I stopped in St James Cavalier for coffee, so I missed out on both my front row seat and a programme. The concert focussed on Hayden's flute pieces and I loved it. It started with a solo flute piece by CPE Bach moved through two works for flute, violin and bass and finished with a Hayden flute quartet when Sarah Spiteri joined the group.
I wanted to add a couple of points raised at the forum on Friday. Katrina Camilleri talked about her experience working with refugees in Malta. She quoted from some of the irregular migrants. One said that Malta is like a bus terminal where people are waiting for their future direction to open out. This metaphor is literally played out at the Valletta bus terminal which is always teeming with African migrants who seem to have made the windy circle their social gathering point.
The other aspect that emerged strongly for me is how the experience of the Marsa community and the refugee centre located there is put forward as an example of what can be achieved. In the general forum, a migrant from Africa, who is now settled in Malta and married to a Maltese woman, told us about the 'Clean up Marsa' campaign that he had been involved in together with the refugees who now live in Marsa. That campaign did a lot to raise local awareness and build bridges between cultures. Marsa councillors who had never been to the refugee centre previously have now become regular visitors.
But as well as enabling people to see the positive contributions that can be made by people from diverse cultures, we need to address issues that arise in economic competition. Paul Clough made the point, again drawing from his own experience, that sometimes we explain tension between people as cultural competition when it is actually competition in the job market. Another factor that was touched on at the forum but we all tended to skate away from it is the strong Roman Catholic conviction held by many Maltese that may nurture a social system that is closed to cultural diversity.
The 'Clean up Marsa' campaign was also mentioned by a young man who works at the refugee centre and who attended the arts workshop after the coffee break. He used the campaign as an example of community arts because it had brought people together and had changed the local landscape. He also talked about how he is now working on finding a space for art in Marsa where the work of artists from diverse cultures can be exhibited.
A young woman from the Museum of Archaeology also talked about her vision of opening up the museum space to exhibits from the diverse cultures who have influenced Maltese identity today.
After the arts workshop, the 'stayers' in the forum gathered back in the St James cinema to hear the reports from the four groups and to hear about the launch of a new website that features the diverse cultural organisations currently operating in Malta. This site can be accessed on www.diversemalta.com
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