Friday, 7 June, 6.00pm, Lobby Bar, Baystreet Hotel
Public Forum on the
Environment and Culture
Cultural
and environmental activist Eric Van Monckhoven will be the guest foreign speaker
at a public forum that will deal with the interdependency of the environment and
culture. The forum will be held in the groundfloor Lobby Bar of Baystreet Hotel
on 7 June, at 6.00pm. Local NGOs and the general public are cordially invited to
attend. Entrance is free.
The
forum will be chaired by environment educator, Vince Caruana (Inizjamed), and
will also be addressed by Dr. Paul Pace (University of Malta) and Dr. Chris
Ciantar (Proġett Skart). This activity is 
being organized by
Inizjamed as part of its six-month project called “Re-Creation: Discarded
Material for Traditional Games”, a project run by Inizjamed with the
support of the "Youth" programme of the EU and Baystreet.
According
to the coordinator of the forum, Karsten Xuereb, “Our natural and social
environment inevitably generates various manifestations of culture, and our
culture is constantly influencing our local environment and our perception of
it. The forum will address the challenges faced by environmental and cultural
non-governmental organisations in view of the interrelation between culture and
environment.”
These themes have not been given the importance they deserve and they hardly feature in important publications like the discussion document on Cultural Policy in Malta issued by the Ministry of Education in 2001 and in the electoral programmes of the three political parties.
One of the issues that Eric Van Monckhoven will be
dealing with is how to promote locally based alternatives to the
global consumer culture. This is a central issue in the “Re-Creation” project because the
young people involved are producing traditional (and also original) Maltese and
Gozitan games from discarded material. One of the aims of the forum is also to
discuss this project, coordinated by Clare Azzopardi and Karsten Xuereb, with
those present.
“Re-Creation” is empowering young Maltese people from two area
secondary schools to channel their energy and creativity into sustainable
practices. Until the end of October, these teenagers will be making traditional
Maltese and Gozitan games (such as il-passju and brilli) out of
domestic waste material. The games will then be played together with a number of
local youth groups in order to share the awareness of sustainable environmental
and cultural practices with a wider public. The actual building of the games is
being coordinated by artist Raphael Vella.
Dr. Paul Pace, who lectures in Environmental Education
at the University of Malta, will be dealing with the cultural barriers that
affect our behaviour towards the environment. Dr Chris Ciantar will be focusing on how
civil society can help the newly-launched Proġett Skart, and
how this project
can assist and enhance the work done by civil society and NGO's. Proġett
Skart is responsible for the implementation of the Islands’ waste management
strategy, including an information campaign which aims to explain to residents in all
households how to recycle and reduce waste.
According
to Vince Caruana (in picture, middle), an adviser of the “Re-Creation”
project, “A common perception is that a product becomes waste when it is no
longer functional. It then creates a problem for disposal. But waste is not only
a function of utility but also of value. Looked at from the point of view of
utility the clothes stored in our wardrobe would fulfill their function
adequately. However they have been made valueless due to cultural forces.
This applies to almost every other product. A rethinking on waste
requires a rethinking on the cultural processes that convert artifacts into
waste.”
“This
forum,” says Caruana, “is an opportunity to rethink waste and an invitation
for Civil Society Organisations to originate projects that run counter to
fashion replacement and disposability. “Re-Creation” is one such
experiment.”
Eric Van Monckhoven is an activist with special
interest in crosscultural understanding and indigenous peoples. Van
Monckhoven collaborates with a large number of non-governmental and grass-roots
organisations struggling for local regeneration and sustainability in Europe,
Africa and North America. Together with Professor Tonino Perna and the Third
World Group, he was a leading figure in the organisation of an International
Workshop on "Building Partnership for a Sustainable Future in the
Mediterranean: Beyond Globalisation to Local Regeneration"
held in Malta in April 2000. He has published Travelling in Circles, a narrative
work-in-progress, which is available online at http://www.multimania.com/talktree.
For
more information about this “Environment and Culture” forum and about
“Re-Creation”, write to inizjamed@maltaforum.org
or phone 2137 6941 or 7946 7952. Information is also available at http://inizjamed.cjb.net
Adrian
Grima
