Eleven artistic organisations and festivals have signed a cultural partnership agreement with the Malta Arts Council that will see them collectively receive more than €1 million over the next three years.

Culture Minister Owen Bonnici said the agreement would help artists plan into the future rather than depend on annual financial assistance which hindered long term projects from becoming a reality.

“We couldn’t keep this situation where artists were being given handouts every year. It would have been the easiest thing for me to just split this fund up between all the organisations and say ‘we’ll see about more funding next year’, but we want to move away from that. We have a vision for the future and a strategy for this sector and want to work with those involved to achieve it,” Dr Bonnici said.

The selected organisations are the META Foundation; Teatru Salesjan; Opening Doors Association; BLITZ and Kinemastik.

The selected festivals are: The Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival organised by Inizjamed; the Malta Short Film Festival organised by the Malta Film Foundation, the designers’ component of the Malta Fashion Week, the Valletta Film Festival organised by the Film Grain Foundation, L-Għanja tal-Poplu and the Beland Music Festival.

The chosen partners will be working with one of a number of priority social groups, which the council has identified as needing greater cultural participation. These include the elderly, disabled, youths, and migrants.

In total, the council will be investing some €10 million into creative projects over the next five years through different partnership agreements, strategic funding and development plans.

Some €1.3 million will be invested into research and development for future projects while a new financial programme for emerging artists will be rolled out in the coming months. A further €1 million will be invested in education programmes over the next five years to ensure that all youths are exposed to creative and artistic projects of some kind.