Over 100 events planned for Notte Bianca

The programme for this years' Notte Bianca, or Lejl Imdawwal, organised by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, incorporates over 100 different events in the space of a night.

As of this year, Malta also forms part of a cultural network known as the European White Nights Network, together with Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Riga and Bucharest.

The first year Notte Bianca was held attracted some 76,000 people and last years' events supposedly saw over 90,000 people flocking to the capital.

Davinia Galea, the council's CEO, said that this year the budget for Notte Bianca was €200,000. Most of the funds will be absorbed by the logistical aspects of the myriad of events; such as the stages, lights, sound and providing for all the employees working overtime in the Heritage Malta sites.

This is the third edition of Notte Bianca but it is the first time that all Heritage Malta museums and sites in Valletta will be open to the public free of charge.

In the first two years, there was a great concentration and congestion of people in given areas. Therefore, this year Notte Bianca has been extended to cover a larger expanse of space, from City Gate to the Auberge de Baviere, Peter Busuttil, artistic director of Notte Bianca, said.

In an attempt to make activities available to a wider audience, certain events will be looped and repeated throughout the evening while guided tours of some of the sites have even been extended till Sunday, starting again at 10 a.m. and concluding at 2 p.m.

The mayor of Valletta, Alexei Dingli, said Valletta has a lot of undervalued and unutilised spaces that may be tapped into for such an event. A Clean -Up Valletta campaign has been launched in an effort to get the capital city looking as good as possible for the big night. The campaign is envisaged to extend beyond Notte Bianca activities.

Notte Bianca will take place between October 4 and 5.

www.nottebiancamalta.com