“Schemes such as Kreattiv should be encouraged in order to gear future generations towards culture and the concept of cultural economy,” Parliamentary Secretary José Herrera said during an address to students and teachers at the St Ignatius College, Handaq Boys Secondary School, at a rehearsal of the school’s current Kreattiv project ‘Creating a Student Operetta,’ which will be staged for the public in May.

He added, “We need to address the deficit indicated in the report published by the EU regarding attendance by youths to cultural activities. Such initiatives promote culture as a learning tool through hands-on activities.”

The Culture Directorate within the Parliamentary Secretariat for Culture and Local Government launched a call for projects under the Kreattiv Scheme, inviting educational institutions to undertake projects in partnership with creative partners from all creative sectors.

The students have been working together with author Trevor Zahra, devising an original script, with music composer, Maestro Ray Sciberras, to compose the original music score, and with the band of the Armed Forces of Malta, who will be playing live at the performance.

José Herrera said that the Kreattiv funding programme is part of the Government’s commitment to engage educators and creative practitioners in collaboration, encouraging students and educators towards further engagement within the creative sector by adding value to the learning experience and to the school environment.

Kreattiv supports through a competitive process, joint projects designed and implemented collaboratively between students, teachers and creative practitioners. These projects seek to complement the curriculum but are not driven by it. All areas of creative activity are eligible, namely: heritage, arts, media, and creative services.

A new addition to the scheme is the that Higher Education Institutions that provide programmes accredited for Levels 5 till Levels 8, and state-licensed life-long learning centres (within the Directorate for Life-Long Learning), can partner up with the schools and creative practitioners to implement the project. These partners add value to the project particularly when engaging collaborations between students.

To date, 54 projects over the past three years have benefited from this scheme reaching hundreds of students all across Malta and Gozo. The annual amount committed for Kreattiv is €80,000. A maximum of €5,000 may be awarded to every selected proposal, which amount is to be used over a 12-month period (academic year 2014-2015), said José Herrera.

In relation to this call, the Culture Directorate is organising a Workshop on ‘Devising artistic projects with and for schools’ on the 7th of April, addressed at creative practitioners, higher education institutions and secondary school representatives, with the participation of two international speakers: Beatrice Hammar, a representative from ‘Kulturverket,’ a municipality-led organisation from Umea, Sweden, focusing on developing artistic projects with children; and Peggy Brandon, Director at Mocca, an independent expert centre for arts and cultural education in Amsterdam, supporting good cooperation between schools and cultural institutions.

Full details of the scheme can be found in the Guidelines, which are available for download from www.kreattiv.gov.mt.

Additional information on this scheme and also regarding the workshop may be obtained from the Culture Directorate by email to kreattiv.mot@gov.mt or by phone on 22915056.

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