A major new international event on Malta's cultural calendar, the first Valletta International Visual Arts Festival, VIVA, will serve as a new platform for Maltese and international visual arts practitioners. Running 1-7 September 2014, VIVA has a special focus on curatorial practice with the first international curatorial school and invited emerging curators in residence. With this year’s programme, VIVA is creating a unique platform for contemporary art in Malta whilst initiating a process of change in the local cultural scene. With a wide variety of local and international artists presenting recent work or collaborating in joint projects, VIVA is creating new international networks which will last far beyond the festival itself. Check out the VIVA programme of exhibitions, screenings, discussions, curatorial interventions and more ... Curatorial School Cultural theorist and critic Mieke Bal and art centre director Maria Lind, will be among the leading speakers in an intensive one-week curatorial programme in Valletta, from the 1st to the 6th September. The Valletta 2018 Foundation is organising this Curatorial School as part of the Valletta International Visual Arts (VIVA), in collaboration with St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity and with the support of the Faculty of Education, University of Malta.

“VIVA, and particularly the Curatorial School, is a strong and important step towards developing the creative sector and especially the visual arts which have not been given the necessary attention over the past years,” said Valletta 2018 Foundation Chairman, Jason Micallef. “The Valletta International Visual Arts Festival is a high calibre example of the direction the Maltese creative sector will be taking in the years to come”.

The Curatorial School programme is intended for practitioners and students in a variety of related areas including fine arts, art education, arts administration, curating and history of art. Participants in the course will follow a programme of lectures and will also be able to present their curatorial ideas or their own art-work for feedback from invited speakers. The theme for this first edition of the Curatorial School is Curating: Politics, Publics, Pedagogies. It deals with power relations in displays, social practices in curating contemporary art, engaging audiences and methods of mediating contemporary art, alternative pedagogic models and different museum practices. Curators in Residence Maltese artists will have the opportunity to meet Dutch emerging curators Lennard Dost, Mare van Koningsveld and Suzanne Wallinga as part of VIVA the Valletta International Visual Arts festival. The curators are in Malta from 24th August to 7th September, to conduct initial research on Maltese contemporary art, with the aim of proposing an exhibition involving Maltese and international artists in 2015. Maltese visual artists will have the opportunity to discuss their art practice and ideas and the possibility of including their work in the 2015 exhibition. ------------------ Among VIVA's co-organisers, take a look at V.18, the visionary presentation of Valletta as European Capital of Culture 2018. The Valletta 2018 vision aims to set in motion a process of culture-led regeneration of Valletta and its surrounding harbour area in which the whole Maltese archipelago can engage. It calls for new infrastructure for the cultural sector, both physical buildings and spaces and the training of human resources, as well as a truly virtual network to support 2018.