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Ronnie Micallef, the British Council’s country director for Malta, talks to Erika Brincat about their pro-active philosophy in support of education and the arts. 
Simply put, what is the British Council’s mission and what do you do?
Our remit is to highlight contemporary UK arts and education to a young audience in Malta and to encourage the internationalisation of young people. Our role is to engage in people-to-people discussion about common themes and issues, which young people in our two countries want to find out more about. The arts are all about absorbing and adapting the best of world cultures. A basic element of this process is ‘listening’. In listening and sharing we grow.
How would you describe your cultural and educational philosophy and how has it evolved over the years?
The British Council seeks to create opportunities in the field of education and the arts. We focus our attention on ‘young people’ between the ages of 18 and 35. However, we work with people of all ages, of course. We are interested in building relationships that last between young people in the UK and Malta, by engaging them with creative ideas from the UK and helping them to achieve personal goals.
Creating relationships of trust is vital in the world we live in today. As nations are becoming more interdependent we feel it is increasingly important to listen to other points of view and to have certain values attached to your work – mutuality, openness, sharing and honesty. We’re interested in cultural relations, the state of Britain today, including inter-faith dialogue and diversity issues. We use the arts and education as the basis for our work in these areas.
Internationally, the British Council also incorporates governance issues, gender issues, science and English language teaching. For instance, the British Council also has its own language schools in countries like Italy, Spain and France. Here in Malta rather than doing a lot of different things, we focus on a cultural, and a professional input supporting a more focussed audience in the educational sector. Not many people know about our educational work, but it is quite relevant. We support the Education Division in English language learning, distributing 3,000 copies of ‘Class Out!’ a bi-annual magazine for secondary school learners.
The British Council is now present in 110 countries, so it’s a global organisation. We are based at the Malta Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise in Valletta.
The UK is evolving. We represent all four devolved nations: Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. It will be interesting observing the impact of a younger Leader of the Opposition on British politics. As a younger generation comes into power in the UK, the nature of UK-Malta political discourse is also bound to evolve. We have to move on from the tourist and George Cross Island dialogue. In our ongoing research, a young Maltese student had this to say about British people ‘We meet tourists. They are mostly blonde and sunburn – and hungover by the end of the week.’ This one example highlights how allowing our perceptions of tourists alone, to shape our perception of the outside world is inappropriate and ultimately counter-productive. Visitors to Malta represent a distorted picture of what is happening in the UK today. Our target audience in Malta therefore consists of young Maltese who are willing to go deeper into the question of what constitutes British identity.
This issue of ‘who we are’ is receiving a lot of attention worldwide, in the UK and also in Malta. I think it is important for an organisation such as the British Council to be aware of this debate and to contribute to this question. These discussions are mostly led by individuals, and many of them are web-based. There is a particularly vibrant discussion on the nature of identity at all levels taking place on internet blog sites. Individuals are therefore forming new communities, which transcend our natural borders.
They are slowly taking responsibility, and people do not depend as much on governments anymore. And as an organisation we are very aware of this. At least 10,000 people visit our website. But it’s not just the numbers – it’s the quality of interaction that counts as well. What excites us is the idea of influencing the future. E-democracy, E-expression, E-poetry, and IT communities. I think there is a lot that can be done in these areas. We are also building up a reputation as an office that operates on a wider Euro-Mediterranean platform.
For such a small island, my feeling is that we have a lot of creative people. The arts scene is rich.
Very rich indeed! Particularly in literature, where the local scene is highly sophisticated. Organisations like InizjaMed are having a clear impact. The Malta Gay Rights Movement and the Gay Film Festival held in collaboration with St. James Cavalier, are other examples of NGO-led activity – a courageous artistic and social statement, using culture to create awareness and shape the future.
When you engage with a new idea it changes you and therefore you become more open to the world around you. You end up seeing colours in a different way.
Remind us of a few successful highlights over the last two years: your 2004 - 2005 Cultural Programme.
‘Give’ was a cross cultural Classical-Azerbaijani fusion of traditional and contemporary European music and techno with the classical Middle Eastern Sufi mystical music of Davood Azad among others, held at Misfits and St James. Recent dance group visits include Publife, and Mavin Khoo, a highly innovative Malaysian dancer.
Klandestini was an internet-based young writers exchange aimed at encouraging new writers – the authors taking part represented the emerging Mediterranean literary talent from Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy and Greece, as part of a creative literature network facilitated by the British Council. (see http://klandestinit.britishcouncil.org)
Our work is difficult to classify as it tends to defy stereotypical starting points. It may be disconcerting for more conventional people, who are happy with familiarity, but we aim to represent contemporary trends in British arts and education. So far we’ve managed to attract a younger audience to our events, but we still have a long way to go to really link in with the ever-younger ‘Paceville generation’.
Do you usually wait to be approached by British artists, or do you find out what’s hot and new on the contemporary UK Arts scene, and how it can be shared and presented overseas?
We have a clear British Council Malta office philosophy, so we know what we want, and what messages we want put across – and there is a vast selection in the UK, so finding creative, topical, articulate performers has not been an issue. We usually approach artists selected for their originality and professionalism, especially those who highlight our core messages and philosophy through their art. We use the arts to promoted diversity, tolerance and change.
Are you also open to collaborating with a selection of diverse public and private organisations, and NGOs whose agendas are in line with your own cultural philosophy?
Yes, especially if we share a similar philosophy. But, we always have to emphasise that we are not a funding institution, so the organisations we are partnering with must also be willing to work with us. It should be a two-way street.
Do you help to promote Maltese local artists within British shores, despite the fact it is not your main purpose as an organisation?
No, I’m afraid we don’t. However, although the promotion of local artists is not part of our main agenda, it tends to happen as a natural consequence, when artists from the UK and Malta are collaborating and engaging in creative ideas for e.g. in the case of Kneehigh and our recent collaboration between Northern Irish musicians and Renzo Spiteri. So in the end Maltese artists do benefit, because it helps shape the way in which they are developing. We look for fresh ideas from the two countries, put them together through appropriate workshops and create the right environment for them to grow.
Does it give you personal satisfaction to meet such a wonderful diversity of entertainers, performers and artists from Malta, the UK and beyond?
Tremendous satisfaction! I get to meet many highly creative and ‘powerful’ people. When I talk about ‘powerful’ I think of ‘personal power’ – individuals with a strong sense of self, individuality, and form of expression. Every time I meet someone new, I also change.
And last of all, can you divulge in advance any projected highlights for the year 2006?
Our current objective is to maintain the quality and broaden our audience. First off, we shall be hosting “Something Dark”, Lemn Sissay’s critically acclaimed one-man show, to be performed at St James Cavalier on January 13 and 14 2006. Lemn Sissay was given up by his Ethiopian mother in the 1960s in the UK, and taken into a series of foster homes. He has had five books published in ten years, also appearing regularly on BBC, and guesting for over forty albums. He articulates questions such as: “Who am I and what is the journey of my life?” Our own programme year starts in March, so we are presently working on future events at this point.
For more information about the British Council, and their cultural events in 2006 visit www.britishcouncil.org
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