Sliema councillor and events committee chair Pierre Portelli speaks to Ramona Depares about the upcoming Sliema Arts Festival.
This is the third edition of the Sliema Arts Festival. Can you explain how the event has grown and changed since its inception and what is the main aim behind it?
The concept was initially created to host and exhibit a concoction of arts and music.
The idea behind this festival is to have a number of local and foreign, street and contemporary artists work together and at the same time expose their talents to all the Sliema residents (and non-residents) who attend the festival.
What are the particular challenges of organising this kind of event?
One of the major challenges must definitely be striking a balance between the festival content, especially the music aspect and the resident’s tranquillity. This has always been a top priority.
Sliema’s clear blue seas and unique promenade is the perfect setting for such an event and most of this year’s challenges have been overcome successfully in their planning stages.
We achieved this mostly thanks to the work done in conjunction with the help of the Sliema events committee, which I chair and which includes a number of councillors.
The help of council secretary Rachel Formosa and street art director James Micallef Grimaud was especially invaluable.
And the biggest satisfactions?
Without any doubt, the biggest satisfaction will be seeing artists, musicians and the public flock to Sliema in the peak of summer, to enjoy the four music arenas and over 30 artists.
Furthermore, seeing all the councillors pitch in their ideas and working together to plan such an important festival for our locality, is another immense satisfaction.
What will be the main highlights this year?
For this year’s festival we shall be hosting MTO, a world-renowned French street artist who has a following of over 350,000 people. He will be creating a land-mark on one of Sliema’s large-scale walls, which has been ‘donated’ by the apartment owners.
Other attractions will include an outdoor arts exhibition curated by Rachel Formosa at the Independence Garden.
The exhibition comments on the process of urbanisation and will introduce to the festival other forms of contemporary art.
These include a large-scale sculpture by Matthew Pandolfino, interactive game art by Mighty Box Games, a sculptural installation by Tom Farrugia, installation art by Elisa von Brockdorff, an eco-design Installation by Vera Sant Fournier Design Studio that is coordinated by Patron Magazine and photo-graphy by Zvezdan Reljic.
For the first time this year, we will also install a number of walls on the pro-menade and installations at Independence Garden in order for the street artists to spray paint on. The list of artists includes Troglodyte Crew (Malta), Inkie (UK), Marcamix (Dublin), Betarok75 (Scotland) and Dns Crew (Germany).
Where will the events be concentrated?
The events will be taking place on the promenade stretch above the Independence Gardens up to Fond Għadir beach, where most artists will be found producing their works of art.
There will also be healthy food and drink stalls and an artisan and crafts market, which will feature over 20 stalls.
The main stage will feature many local upcoming bands and acoustic sets and will take place in the same gardens. An alternative rock stage, hosted by No Sweat Productions, will be placed underneath the tower.
A chill by day and party by night atmosphere is being coordinated by Duncan F and Alex Thomson on the beach stretch between Torri and Surfside, which we have dubbed Surfer’s Paradise. Juuls Café will be hosting the reggae area closer to Fond Għadir beach before Surfside.
Sliema is notoriously known for its parking problems, but to ease this issue, we have teamed up with Tigné Point car park, which is offering a discounted fixed rate during the festival weekend. This is complemented by a free park-and-ride system that will run until 1am.
Why do you believe that these locality-specific kind of events are important for the Maltese cultural scene?
I wouldn’t say that these events are important, I’d say that these are essential, in order to express one’s talents and to showcase cultural diversity by continuing to strive for success and excellence.
Together with the organising committee, sponsors and various partners, we have worked extremely hard on the concept of diversity and we feel that there is no better place to express this in a locality other than Sliema.
How do you see the festival as fitting in within the run-up to V18?
We are pleased to have secured the support of the V18 Foundation – without the foundation’s continuous support we would not have managed to plan such a large event, with so many different interchanging ideas and international artists.
One of the goals of the foundation is that of promoting local events which can represent Malta, in the international festival arena. Have we grown so much? Not as yet.
However, one of our main goals is to place Sliema and, subsequently, Malta on the map of international summer events, especially since we offer all amenities within walking distance for tourists of all ages.
This year you are also introducing cinema to the festival. What lead to this decision and what will that section involve?
The cinema is being introduced as one of the main features of the Outdoor Arts Exhibition to showcase audio-visual art forms.
A contemporary short film by Chris Zarb and architecture project will be presented by Patron Magazine. Din L-Art Ħelwa youth will screen a silent movie, Bolibar, which partly filmed in Malta.
The film was directed by Walter Summers in 1928 and there will be an introduction by film buff Jean-Pierre Borg.
An accompanying musical score will be played live by musician Frank Bonnici, who wrote the piece specifically for Bolibar, a few years back.
The cinema will also host a lecture by architect Edward Said, titled Sliema’s Arts Nouveau & Deco, which will deal with the exhibition’s theme of urbanisation.
Sliema Arts Festival takes place between July 17 and 19 in various localities across Sliema.
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