A feast of frescoes was held in the medieval town of Treglio (province of Chieti), in the Abruzzo region of Italy, between September 4 and 11, in which students from nine European countries participated.

Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Estonia, Portugal, Hungary and Malta were also invited to send two art students and a mentor to participate in this international workshop.

The workshop consisted of an intensive, hands-on step-by-step process for fresco painting. The open-ended theme expected students to produce sketches which were enlarged to full scale and reproduced in line form on the interior walls of Treglio Town Hall.

The original technique, even for reproducing the large drawing was insisted upon under the supervision of renowned master painter Vico Calabro, the only surviving Italian fresco artist (today in his 70s) using original techniques and materials. A layer of plaster was put onto the courtyard walls (using finer sand from the river bank nearby) before executing the fresco painting on a semi-wet surface.

The Maltese students - Amy Seguna and Ryan Schembri from MCAST Institute of Art & Design - besides having a whale of a time in the process, found Treglio extremely exciting, even though it has only 1,300 inhabitants. Morning sessions were followed by afternoon outings to nearby towns visiting museums, monasteries and other sightseeing.

The completed murals were presented during a social evening of entertainment, presentations and speeches by prominent local authorities and official representatives from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The stay was funded by the EU's Italian Project for the Development of Sustainable Tourism and the Italian Cultural Institute in Malta. A paper on vocational training education at MCAST Malta was presented on the presentation night by MCAST Art & Design Deputy director Patrick Galea.