A year in the life of the City, Valletta 2018. The Story begins.

The bells are ringing out the old year and we are promised a mighty celebration throughout Valletta to bring in 2018 when Valletta will be European Capital of Culture along with Leeuwarden in Holland. We are promised a year of festa, hundreds of cultural events, involvement for all across Malta and a legacy to make us proud. So I have promised myself a year of story-telling via this blog about how the year unfolds on the streets and in the culture of the residents of Valletta.

I have lived in Valletta now since before the bid for the title was made. I was involved with the community consultation process that was undertaken in drawing up the proposal. Since then, the community consultation dried up for a while but I kept my finger in the pie by attending the annual conference for Valletta 18 and getting deeply involved in the community consultation process undertaken for the proposed Valletta Design Hub at the Bicceria, the old Knights abattoir in Lower Valletta. The Design Hub is one of four flagship projects undertaken for Valletta 2018: MUZA is the recreation of the museum of Fine Arts as a museum of Community Art located in the Auberge d'Italie; Is-Suq tal-Belt will open its doors next week to a new life as the food and art hub of Valletta; and Strait Street has been "rebranded" as an upmarket night spot with some interesting alternative venues including the old Splendid Hotel.

Over the years, as lines of suited men announced this and that, I struggled to keep abreast with all the organisational changes at Valletta 2018. I observed how the gentrification of the city was speeding up, how restaurant tables and car parking were taking over the spaces that I loved to stroll, and Boutique hotels were mushrooming so that rents for ordinary residents were becoming impossible. I toyed with the idea of becoming a volunteer with Valletta 2018 as a way of staying engaged. In the end, I decided to remain independent and participate wherever and whenever I could. In 2017, I've been to workshops with TimesUp, Gewwa Barra, Transparadiso, and Orfeo and Majnun. I'll write more about all of these projects as the year progresses.

Here is the start of my year in Valletta. I hope it will be a creative and inspiring story but I'm not going to gloss over the tension.