My current life takes over from my past. Yesterday I went to a conference called 'The historic city: a reference model for urban sustainable development policies' hosted by the International committee on Historic Towns and Villages. It was held in the Auberge de Provence which is now the archaeology museum in Republic street. The photo shows the PM, the chair of Heritage Malta and the president of CIVVIH (from right to left) dwarfed by the magnificent painting in the hall that we were in.
I stayed for the whole day sitting through rather dull presentations where people put up big chunks of text (sometimes from their own publications) and proceeded to read the words out loud. But I thought a lot about where I have come from and where I am now. Most of the participants were architects and town planners who have now started to talk about the fourth pillar of sustainability - culture (alongside heritage, economic and social). Community cultural development in Australia adopted this idea as a cornerstone of praxis many years ago yet there were no representatives of this area or of community arts at the conference. In fact, there were very few Maltese people in general even though the president of CIVVIH is Maltese.
The significance of the social in sustaining the vibrancy of cities was also discussed. The general trend of people moving out of the historic parts of cities and the subsequent gentrification was raised. In Valletta the population has dropped from something like 25,000 at the time of the knights to a mere 6,500 now. I felt privileged to be one of that small band of people tal belt (from Valletta). I started to think about how I might link my past work in community cultural development with my current life in this historic city. It is curious that my last two posts on this site have been about my growing love for my adopted home.
The other idea that came up often and resonated with me was the proposition that conservation is about the past and sustainability is about thinking of the future whilst living now. This is the continuing theme of my life today as I learn how to live well in old age. I'm off now for coffee with a friend!
1 comment:
Hi Jo,
Just catching up with internet reading and this post was very interesting. I agree with "conservation is about the past and sustainability is about thinking of the future whilst living now". In other words its a holy trinity.
A quick reference to your latest post - I loved the story about the railway - people are the same all over the world! that's a thought for sustainability.
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