The Project Support Scheme is one of Arts Council Malta’s tools to enable individuals, groups, and organisations to plan, develop, be represented in, and deliver on ACM’s strategic goals and ongoing strategy.
Primarily it addresses creative professionals and communities, by:
• Nurturing creative potential and supporting its development by encouraging co-creation, collaboration and experimentation;
• Investing in artistic excellence by encouraging levels of creative risk, experimentation, and active engagement of communities while supporting quality projects as well as identifying talent and encouraging its development;
• Documenting and exploring Malta’s past and present artistic and cultural communities, as well as Malta’s cultural and artistic legacy;
• Promoting and supporting diversity, inclusivity and community development – enabling collaborative arts projects, knowledge development and dissemination of good practice;
• Providing disadvantaged groups with accessibility to a wide range of quality art experiences and art-engagement activities, as well as acting as a platform for young promising talent and intergenerational as well as intercultural dialogue.
The scheme forms part of Arts Council Malta’s funding schemes which aim to invest in the development of quality-driven creative work which pushes the artists’, the sectors’, and communities’ boundaries for more engaging creative experiences. The Project Support Scheme aims to support artists and communities in taking creative risks, to develop new work through experimentation and collaboration.
This scheme gives creatives support throughout the development and implementation phases and covers the time and resources needed for creative professionals and their collaborators to develop projects from their concepts.
Creative professionals/individual artists; Entities registered with the Malta Business Registry (including companies, partnerships, foundations and organisations/associations); Groups, Collectives and Consortia; Registered Cooperatives; Voluntary Organisations enrolled with the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations.
The deadline to apply is Thursday 6 October 2022 at noon. Late application cannot be accepted.
Guidelines
Click here to download guidelines and click here to download application form template.
Applicants are required to register a new profile as from January 2021.
Apply here.
Results
Application Deadline: 6th October 2022
Applicant: Umberto Buttigieg
Reference number: PSG96-22-2137
Project Title: Kuluri u Tifkiriet
Amount awarded: €3,635
This project proposes a multisensory experience bridging art, collective memory and therapy for individuals living with dementia and their formal and informal carers in a residential setting. Sound, imagery, touch and smell will be adapted as a means to explore memories and emotions in the participants and as a way to strengthen relations, allowing healing and wellbeing in such settings. Self-expression is promoted along with a feeling of achievement thus offering space for curiosity, wonder, hope and joy which can offer a new outlook on life. Individuals living with dementia and their formal and informal carers will have the opportunity to explore together a structured, multi-faceted art programme in a therapeutic setting. This project will seek to provide a safe space for a therapeutic art experience through the use of expressive techniques rather than simply creating beautiful works of art. Throughout the sessions, the participants will be working with different materials including clay, printing, collage work and painting.
Applicant: Ġulja Holland
Reference number: PSG31-22-2030
Project Title: A New Gothic – Solo Exhibition at Spazju Kreattiv
Amount awarded: €23,391
‘A New Gothic’ presents the largest body of work to date by figurative artist Ġulja Holland, at Spazju Kreattiv in April 2023. Holland’s work is invested in the liminal and introspective, forging an understanding of the global now; impending, anticipating and approaching something altogether new. The broad and universal themes of gender identity, social well-being and climate crises have been instrumental in the creation of this series and promise to intrigue, engage and open up the conversation around salient issues. Holland’s ambition is not simply to illustrate the terrors of our times but also to explore the unique opportunities for change that such threats provide for us. For her fourth solo exhibition, Holland is collaborating with curator Andrew Borg Wirth, as well as several local and international artists, academics and practitioners from across disciplines. In the four-week period of the project, she will be delivering a diverse programme of multimedia explorations.
Applicant: Alexia Giordmaina Medici
Reference number: PSG70-22-2103
Project Title: Mãter
Amount awarded: €26,000
Māter means ‘mother’ in Latin. However, exploring its etymological meaning, one realises that the word takes on a set of unexpected connotations ranging from ‘motherland’ (patria “fatherland” in Spanish and Catalan) to ‘checkmate’, ‘suppress’ or ‘quell’ (an insurrection), ‘ogle’ (an attractive person), ‘reproduction’ (mating), ‘part of the brain’, ‘to kill’, or ‘tomato’, depending on the language. Three curators and six local and international artists explore the term within its socio-political, historical and contemporary context in order to create a travelling exhibition between two countries that seem to have very little in common, in places with akin contexts. The exhibition will be presented at the National Archives of Malta (in Rabat), and at the Gardens of the Maternity (Barcelona), base, among others, of the Historical Archive of the Barcelona Provincial Council, thus initiating a bilateral conversation related to the temporality of knowledge, the politics of religion and alternative forms of mothering.
Applicant: Charlene Farrugia Bozac
Reference number: PSG57-22-2086
Project Title: The Piano Music of Malta Volume 1
Amount awarded: €29,920
This is a recording project of Maltese piano music ranging from the early 19th century to contemporary (living) composers, to be released by Grand Piano Naxos. The aim of the recording project Piano Music from Malta Volume 1 is to give the listener a cross-section of Malta’s 200-year-old piano music heritage. This project will embrace: i. Researching Malta’s piano music heritage and bringing it back to life; ii. Rediscovering past rare Maltese female composers; iii. Documenting the manuscripts by typesetting them into clearly legible scores; iv. A recording of the highest calibre to be released by a world-wide CD company; v. Promotion of Maltese heritage and contemporary Maltese composers; vi. A publication of the recorded works accessible to everyone.
Applicant: Tyrone Grima
Reference number: PSG02-22-1951
Project Title: The way it came: an exploration on fear
Amount awarded: €25,576
The way it came: an exploration on fear is a project leading to a devised and physical theatre project that explores the theme of fear. The project is divided into three phases: training, workshops and performance. In the first phase, the cast will be trained by the American theatre company Piper Theatre. In the second phase, the actors will explore and workshop the theme of fear physically using the short story of Henry James The way it came as a stimulus. The third phase will be a performance for the public, held on the 14th, 15th and 16th April 2023 at the Valletta Theatre Campus.
Applicant: Rebecca Farrugia
Reference number: PSG89-22-2128
Project Title: ĠUF
Amount awarded: €16,800
ĠUF is an exhibition project which will see renowned local tattooist Rebecca Bonaci present her first solo exhibition. Having graduated from MCAST in 2014, this exhibition will showcase Bonaci’s fine art practice. Motherhood and the figure of the mother are to be examined in a cultural-historical, philosophical, psychological and artistic depth. The cultural-historical and societal changes that have changed the social position of women over this vast timeframe, have also changed the cultural norms and expectations associated with motherhood. Referencing the Maltese word for ‘womb’, ĠUF therefore explores the theme of contemporary motherhood, informed by the rich prehistoric remains and rituals found in the Maltese archipelago. The iconography and imagery from the primordial period will be revalued and interpreted by the beneficiary and her curatorial team, with the artworks presented in dialogue with artefacts from the period. The beneficiary will also draw from her personal experience of family bonding, femininity, recent social history, childbearing and motherhood so as to present a dialogue between past and present.
Applicant: Lady Lizard
Reference number: PSG12-22-1986
Project Title: Album Release & Promotional Material
Amount awarded: €5,770
The stoner/sludge band Lady Lizard is set to produce a split vinyl record with renowned US label Ripple Music. The release will be promoted and distributed through the label’s international channels. The project also includes the production of an ad-hoc music video and photo shoot.
Applicant: Sarah Maria Scicluna
Reference number: PSG22-22-2008
Project Title: Documents of Inheritance / Poetics of Desire
Amount awarded: €11,300
Documents of Inheritance/Poetics of Desire will explore how wild plants are seen as inherited heirlooms from nature and become a symbol of desire towards our more natural roots. This theme will allow the artists Sarah Maria Scicluna and Ruth Ancilleri to question the difference between the idea of a constructed home, the one we select and build for ourselves, with the natural one we receive through nature, thus viewing it as being inherited. The themes will be explored through drawing, silkscreen printing, and paper weaving, resulting in an exhibition that will be open to the public and an online archive.
Applicant: Theatre Lab Malta
Reference number: PSG54-22-2081
Project Title: Mitt Ruħ
Amount awarded: €23,804
Mitt Ruħ is an interdisciplinary project fusing literature, illustration and theatre. It seeks to adapt Prof Ġorġ Mallia's collection of illustrated Maltese micro stories, Mitt Ruħ, to the stage by exploring how the particular visual and literary aesthetics of this collection can inform performance and design aesthetics in a theatrical production. This collection of a hundred characters offers a kaleidoscope of the Maltese psyche. Each micro story taps into topical issues affecting contemporary Maltese society, especially how individuals deal with degeneration and (in some cases) regeneration in the personal, intimate, relational, societal and environmental spheres of life.
Applicant: Lydon Borg Bonaci
Reference number: PSG30-22-2029
Project Title: From The Ground Up
Amount awarded: €8,804
From The Ground Up is Lydon Borg Bonaci's 3rd official album. After 5 years of releasing his music independently, the artist aims to create his best and most professional work to date by elevating his sound and visual aesthetics to the next level. Throughout the 5 years of being in the industry, the artist has managed to win the Malta Music Awards Best Hip-hop, RnB Act 2020, tour around Europe and the Czech Republic, release projects with well-known foreign artists such as PTK, and perform at all the major local events such as BeerFest, EarthGarden, Notte Bianca and Malta Fashion Week 2021. He is also set to open up for superstar Central Cee in Prague on the 17th of December 2022. By collaborating with other local creatives, the artist's goal is to showcase the fresh talent brewing on the island to the world, while leaving an impact on the Maltese music scene. The team members collaborating on this project are all in their 20s, which allows fresh ideas to be introduced when it comes to music production, visual aesthetics, marketing tactics and more. With the team in mind, the artist is aiming to bring something completely fresh to the scene with his latest release, something which his fanbase has been longing for, for quite some time.
Application Deadline: 25th April 2022
Applicant: Lou Ghirlando
Reference number: PSG41-22-1467
Project Title: Embodying Creative Selves – the rediscovery of health through an eating disorder
Amount awarded: €9,620
Through this project, Lou Ghirlando proposes to develop her practice as a dramatherapist with a specific focus on working with people with eating disorders. She will explore the application of dramatherapy in two frameworks. The first will be a dramatherapy application of the MANTRA treatment of adults with anorexia, and the second will be an improvisation group nurturing spontaneity and creativity amongst adolescents and adults recovering from eating disorders. There will be 3 pilot groups, each offered to a different age group. Through this project, Lou will continue to develop her specialization in this field by engaging in further professional development opportunities as well as sharing her knowledge with other professionals.
Applicant: Angele Galea
Reference number: PSG21-22-1415
Project Title: Vuċijiet Beltin
Amount awarded: €28,600
‘Vuċijiet Beltin’ is the development of a theatre programme for children at Valletta’s Sala San Duminku. This will be done through a collaboration with local artists, the St Dominic Theatre Group, the Valletta Primary School, the Science in the City festival, and the children’s theatre group More or Less Theatre. These live theatrical productions will address the various needs, desires and dreams of Valletta’s children and local communities. This exercise will serve as a vehicle to make their voices heard, hence the title of the project.
Applicant: Patsy Chetcuti
Reference number: PSG18-22-1400
Project Title: Kinetic Waves
Amount awarded: €17,203
‘Kinetic Waves’ is a dance/technology collaborative, multi-sensory dance and installation project based on specific research. The beneficiary will be using motion sensors which are in props; the manipulation of the props, through the carefully designed choreography following the Fibonacci and phi relationships which are often found in the timing of musical compositions, will generate sound and light design by transferring signals to a computer. The choreographer, composer-engineer interaction is one and the same, whereby the music and light will move to the beat of the performer and not vice versa in the conventional way. The end performance will consist of an interactive multi-sensory corporeal engagement imposed by a relation of kinetic immediacy between the dancers and their environment. The audience will be viscerally taken on a journey; lead by the dancers’ manipulation of the objects, the sound and light will be innovatively generated.
Applicant: Edward Mifsud
Reference number: PSG69-22-1499
Project Title: The Band’s Visit
Amount awarded: €20,000
Following two years of restrictions and postponements, long-term colleagues and musicians Dorothy Bezzina and Edward Mifsud are joining forces to produce ‘The Band’s Visit’, winner of 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. A portrait of one night in a small Israeli desert town, ‘The Band’s Visit’ is not the typical traditional musical. Based on Eran Kolirin’s 2007 film with the same title, it tells the story of an Egyptian police band that is scheduled to perform in Israel but gets lost due to a miscommunication. With zero razzle-dazzle or glossy Broadway belts, this musical seeks to pursue the specific and humane over the grandiose, shifting gently amongst encounters silly and sad and bittersweet, as this group of lost Arab musicians and their provincial Israeli hosts move tentatively towards each other, from breaking bread to sharing secrets, suffering, and — most profound of all — music.
Applicant: Darren Tanti
Reference number: PSG49-22-1476
Project Title: Inaction is a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Amount awarded: €23,358
This art project is meant to shed light on the mediatic processes utilized to spread information about war and its effects on the viewer. The work reflects the artist’s preoccupation with fabrication, editing and twisting of information that the people outside the conflict zone might be subjected to. The dangers with this are very serious as they might severely impact public opinion on matters of humanitarian aid and military intervention, based on falsities or half-truths. The project is meant to provoke the viewers by several analytic, ironic and at times cynical works based on factual, fictional images and theoretical work. Different experts from the fields of journalism, film, art, education and the military will also contribute to the project in a number of talks and workshops.
Applicant: Gabriel Zammit
Reference number: PSG20-22-1406
Project Title: GROUNDWATERS
Amount awarded: €17,454
The search for raw art, untouched by the destructive effects of culture, led the artist and art-historian Jean Debuffet (and others) to collect, under the heading ‘Art Brut,’ work made by the poor, uneducated, elderly, and physically or mentally disabled. ‘GROUNDWATERS’ will bring together work made by a collection of individuals functioning outside the established art world in the same spirit of exploring independence from ordinary culture, with the crucial difference that, while Debuffet can be accused of fetishising the context of suffering, this project will primarily be concerned with the work’s emancipatory potential. The common theme which will run throughout the work in this exhibition will be that its creation stems from a deeply felt need which is unselfconscious and rooted in raw experience. Whether this need is therapeutic, expressive or communicative, it is certainly not artistic in the conventional sense. What is being looked for in this exhibition is work which lacks the self-awareness of the artist, and is thus free from the limits which guide conventional artistic production and therefore leads straight into the collective groundwaters of our collective subconscious.
Applicant: Dean Saviour Muscat
Reference number: PSG46-22-1474
Project Title: Laughing Heart EP
Amount awarded: €4,472
‘Laughing Heart’ is the debut EP by singer songwriter Dean Muscat. The project includes pre-production, recording, production, mixing and mastering of three songs all written and performed by the artist. Recording and production will take place remotely between the artist’s home in Malta and a London-based producer, using small home studio setups. Additional funds from the project will go towards the creation of promo artwork to accompany the EP, its online promotion and music distribution.
Applicant: Janelle Borg
Reference number: PSG26-22-1437
Project Title: ĠENN Debut Album
Amount awarded: €20,000
The group ĠENN is ready to take the next step in its creative career by investing in the conception and development of its debut full-length album. Having meticulously prepared a release plan, the group members firmly believe that seeing this project through will help them reach wider audiences within the UK and in particular Europe.
Applicant: Decline the Fall
Reference number: PSG73-22-1503
Project Title: Perspectives – Decline the Fall
Amount awarded: €19,107
The project consists of an 18-month plan. The metalcore band intends to kick off with musical creation and recording, and to finish off with promotion on social media, particularly around Europe by means of gigs and concerts.
Applicant: Neo Borg Bonaci
Reference number: PSG60-22-1490
Project Title: The Unconventional Office
Amount awarded: €15,000
‘The Unconventional Office’ is a music platform for local artists to showcase their talents through interviews and performances. Each show will have a different guest artist and will feature a fluid set design with a live audience. The end goal is to help the artists reach their audiences, collaborate and learn from each other. Each artist will be performing in a professional environment, thus also promoting beautiful settings around Malta.
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