Arts Council Malta - Creative Entrepreneurship

ACM champions creative entrepreneurship to motivate sustainable and inclusive growth within Malta’s cultural and creative sectors. our experience and evidence, especially given the pandemic’s impact, demonstrate how the challenges and opportunities arising from creative entrepreneurship are largely shaped by attitudes towards risk, innovation and the diversity of business models that can respond to technological and social changes, stakeholder relationships and overall working conditions.

The cultural and creative sectors present a highly aleatory variety of players with different backgrounds and ambitions relevant to their diverse economic, social and cultural contexts. We recognise that artistic, cultural and creative practitioners have ambitions that range from full-time professional engagement in the cultural and creative sectors to sustaining their practice without it being their primary source of income. Therefore, through investment, advocacy, communication and capacity building, our work will focus on nurturing creative entrepreneurship as a mindset to lead to a more sustainable and inclusive approach. We will be mindful of people’s different realities and supportive of their diversity of engagements with the sectors, as well as their subjective definitions of success. We will consider the distinctiveness of different sub-sectors within our cultural and creative ecology, as well as the range of roles, inputs and set-ups within the creative value chain. To address this strategic goal, we will link to other strategy areas and ensure they support and enable creative entrepreneurship.

We remain committed to elevating the status of artists and professionals by advocating in favour of the arts and creativity within communities and promoting freedom of expression and inclusion, improved working conditions and equitable access to opportunities. We also seek to see creative entrepreneurship become an endeavour with a social remit to promote the position of the cultural and creative sectors within local communities and society at large. This drive will enable and support the collective aspirations of the arts to stimulate social development and well-being.

For this strategy to be successful and comprehensive, we will ensure open and constant dialogue with other entities that are directly responsible for Malta’s cultural and creative sectors and represent the different sectors and conditions that shape the work of cultural and creative practitioners and organisations, such as the Malta Film Commission and the National Book Council, amongst others. We will liaise with these entities to streamline efforts for the benefit of the sectors.