Creative clusters in the regeneration of Valletta and the cultural politics of Strait Street

Abstract

The paper aims to unfold the narrative of development in a creative cluster project for the regeneration of Strait Street in Valletta, Malta. This is approached by first examining the distinctive, historically contentious background of the neighbourhood and, thereafter, unpacking the development narrative of policy documents and the discursive and material constructs about the creative city approach to regeneration strategies in the city. Using a ‘system-wide’ analytical framework, this material is then scrutinized to gain an understanding of the specificities involved and, finally, discuss the crucial features of the key dimensions elucidating the potential strengths and weaknesses of the case

Keywords:

• Valletta
• city regeneration strategies
• development narrative
• creative clusters
• system-wide analysis
• analytical dimensions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The term ‘creative industries’ is still fairly new and there are competing definitions some using the term ‘cultural Industries’ interchangeably (Galloway, 2007). ‘Creative industries’ are more specifically focussed on those activities that are directly concerned with using imaginative and original ideas to create something. ‘Cultural industries’ implies something wider, often loosely relating to or based on cultural aspects that already exist, e.g. in Heritage features/activities. This is further complicated by the fact the creative clusters typically can contain mixtures of these (and other) activities. Here, the term cultural and creative industries (CCIs) is, therefore, used.

2. ‘Culture-led’ (rather that ‘based’) is used here to carry the sense of the (forward) propulsive role of culture in regeneration. The term is used in early, generic city regeneration literature and in much of such early planning literature consulted in Malta. More recent literature that has specifically focussed on creative clusters mainly refers to ‘creativity-led’ (and creativity-led strategies). Consequently, earlier parts of this paper referring to generic/earlier literature/conceptualization use the term ‘culture-led’, whilst later parts mainly use the term ‘creativity-led’.