After several years of preparation for the accolade of becoming one of Europe’s Capitals of Culture, thousands of people will gather on the streets of Valletta this evening to celebrate its launch. Four public spaces – the newly created Tritons Square, St George’s Square, Castille Square and St John’s Square – will host entertainment programmes.

Each square will be the venue for a rolling programme of song and dance, with an ‘after-party’ in St George’s Square. Tenishia and the outstanding Malta Philharmonic Orchestra will be in attendance.

The Maltese love a good party and this promises to be one lasting a whole year. With more than 400 events and 140 projects planned for the next 12 months covering artistic performances, the visual arts, music and dance, film and theatre and every aspect of cultural heritage across all local communities in Malta and Gozo, the emphasis throughout will be on international collaboration.

Still, Valletta 2018 is much more than a year-long party. Valletta, together with Leeuwarden in the Netherlands, joins the many other major cities that have been nominated as European Capitals of Culture over the last three decades in promoting the role it has played in European culture, its historic links with Europe and its European identity.

Being the European Capital of Culture provides Malta with a splendid opportunity to derive huge cultural, social and economic benefits, especially in our burgeoning tourism industry, and to act as a catalyst for regenerating our cultural heritage and fostering our arts, unique culture and traditions.

The European Union has also declared 2018 the European Year of Cultural Heritage, thus raising awareness of the common history and culture binding Europe together. This lies at the very heart of the concept driving the European Capital of Culture.

Valletta 2018 provides a golden opportunity to highlight the riches of cultural diversity, which our 7,000-year-old history and our artistic, religious and other traditions have bequeathed us. They are a vibrant mirror of the wealth and variety of Europe of which Malta has formed an intrinsic part.

But 2018 cannot be seen simply as an opportunity to show off the beauty of our architectural heritage. It is to be no less than “a long-term culture-led regeneration that sees cultural and creative activity as the most dynamic facet of Valletta’s and Malta’s socio-economic life”, as the bid had been branded by the Valletta 18 Foundation.

It should be a stepping-stone to realising the potential of Maltese cultural enterprise and to providing a long-term plan for capacity-building in the cultural field. It must bring about shifts in outlook, challenging us to experiment and raise our expectations and, importantly, to encourage wide participation of individuals from different parts of Maltese society.

The long-term legacy for Malta lies in what it will do for our attitude to culture as a nation. Valletta 2018 must be viewed not just as a flash in the pan for one year, important and exciting though that will be.

It must be judged on whether it acts as the creative vision for the whole of Malta, which translates into artistic and cultural structures and initiatives that bring tangible benefits to our art, music, heritage and quality of life in the long term.

This will be the real significance of Valletta 2018.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial