Cultural Policy

This article adopts a cultural policy perspective to address diversity and
sustainable development in the context of cultural enterprise in Malta,
where projects and scholarly research supported by European funded
programmes in the promotion and protection of diversity in local and
regional environments are at an early stage. This article first argues that
engaging in a critical assessment of the field is timely because of the
growing importance that matters of diversity and sustainability are
having in the light of the cultural-driven and -led models employed that
are having significant impact on human and natural ecosystems; this is
particularly due to a booming population that is becoming more
diversified, a greater economic activity especially related to tourism and
travel and the consistent rise in the demand of creative products and
services. In this light, references to the research conducted by the project
Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS) will support this
argument. It then argues that cultural operators and educators who are
drawn to this area of interest and whose work consists of evaluating the
scene and proposing novel ways of collaboration and research contribute
towards building sustainable models of operation. The methodology
applied is based on a pertinent literature review and observations made
directly in the field of practice.
Keywords: cultural enterprise, cultural tourism, European collaboration,
higher education, social enterprise