Valletta 2018 conference to pinpoint culturally relevant areas around Malta

The Valletta 2018 Foundation’s Cultural Mapping project aims to allow cultural practitioners, artists, researchers, policy makers and town planners to identify the sites and spaces of cultural relevance within each locality.

The Valletta 2018 Foundation has launched a Call for Papers and Posters from academics and practitioners worldwide addressing Cultural Mapping. These are to be presented at a conference titled ‘Cultural Mapping: Debating Spaces and Places’ to be held in Valletta on October 22 and 23.

The range of papers and posters should cover both theoretical and methodological approaches, and practical examples of the issues and challenges faced by researchers and practitioners in the field.

Cultural Mapping: Debating Spaces and Places, is the second annual Valletta 2018 International Conference on Cultural Relations in Europe and the Mediterranean.

The conference will explore Cultural Mapping in Europe and the Mediterranean and is linked to the Cultural Mapping project: a process to generate information and analysis on culture use and practice in public and publicly-accessible spaces in Malta and Gozo. The project is at an advanced stage and a website with geographical data on all towns and villages will be launched in April.

The Valletta 2018 Foundation’s Cultural Mapping project is the first exercise of this kind to be carried out within the local context and aims to allow cultural practitioners, artists, researchers, policy makers and town planners to identify the sites and spaces of cultural relevance within each locality.

The objective of this conference is to bring together academics and practitioners worldwide, with a specific focus on European and Mediterranean countries/regions; to debate cultural mapping and its implications within a Euro-Mediterranean context; to share knowledge and develop a better understanding of cultural mapping practices; to encourage a thorough investigation of how cultural mapping exercises can be utilised as a tool for policy makers and cultural practitioners; to promote cooperation between researchers and operators with regards to cultural mapping; and to foster debate over the long-term legacy of cultural mapping exercises.

The conference is being organised by the Valletta 2018 Foundation in collaboration with the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra.

All interested academics, researchers, PhD students and practitioners are invited to submit, by email, a paper proposal (abstract) of around 400 words by no later than 27 March 2015 to [email protected].

Detailed guidelines for submission are available on the Valletta 2018 Foundation website (www.valletta2018.org). For further enquiries, kindly contact the Foundation on 21242018 or [email protected]