Malta’s Village Oratories Transform into Summer Stages for 2024 Culture Fest

# Fourth Edition of Oratories Cultural Programme Brings Village Squares to Life Across Malta

The narrow streets of Malta’s historic villages will once again echo with music, debate, and children’s laughter as Arts Council Malta unveils the fourth edition of the Oratories Cultural Programme, a summer-long festival that turns centuries-old parish halls into pop-up stages for contemporary culture. Running from July 6 to September 15, the 2024 line-up features 42 home-grown productions—ten more than last year—spanning theatre, dance, puppetry, and live podcasts that promise to pull residents back to the heart of their communities after the evening *kafe* ritual.

First piloted in 2021 as a pandemic antidote, the programme has quietly become a mainstay of the Maltese cultural calendar, channelling €450,000 in grants to local creatives who otherwise struggle to find affordable rehearsal and performance space in a rental market hijacked by Airbnb. This year the action spreads across 23 parishes from Birżebbuġa to Għargħur, with first-time hosts Marsaxlokk and Mġarr converting their 1960s oratories into black-box studios. “We’re literally building infrastructure with fairy-lights and recycled scaffolding,” laughs producer Daniel Azzopardi, gesturing at the transformed hall of the Oratory of St Francis in Birkirkara where a punk-rock *passione* will debut in August.

Locals have embraced the takeover. In Żejtun, 73-year-old *ħabiba* Marika Camilleri volunteered her lace collection as set dressing for *Tan-Nanna*, a one-woman show about dementia told in dialect. “Suddenly my grandchildren want to visit the oratory instead of playing PlayStation,” she grins. Similar inter-generational encounters are the programme’s secret sauce: teenagers who only knew the buildings as catechism classrooms are now rigging lights for queer poetry nights, while band-club veterans trade *ħobż-biż-żejt* recipes with vegan caterers.

The economic spill-over is tangible. Last summer, restaurants in Rabat reported a 28% uptick in Tuesday-night covers when the oratory next door hosted improvised comedy. This year the council has printed a bilingual “Culture Crawl” map that pairs each performance with a nearby family-run eatery—think rabbit ravioli in Qormi after a spoken-word gig on migration. “We’re not bringing culture *to* the villages; we’re reminding everyone it was already here, hiding in *għana* verses and festa fireworks,” says Arts Council chair Albert Marshall.

Critics argue the programme risks sanitising village identity for urban weekenders, but curator Martina Zammit insists the curation is proudly hyper-local. A case in point is *Ħamsin*, a dance piece premiering in Kirkop that uses field recordings of the village’s 5am milk-delivery route. Audiences move with performers past farmhouses, ending inside the oratory where aluminium milk churns become percussion instruments. “It’s site-specific, not site-convenient,” Zammit stresses.

Environmental sustainability is also centre-stage. Single-use plastic is banned; programmes are printed on seed-paper that can be planted to grow wild fennel—an homage to the *ħwawar* that lace village balconies every spring. Meanwhile, a fleet of restored *żepp* buses will shuttle culture-hoppers between localities, reducing carbon tyres on rural lanes and reviving childhood memories of *festa* road-trips.

Tickets are priced at a flat €5, with free entry for under-16s and over-60s, ensuring pensioners aren’t priced out of their own neighbourhoods. A “pay-it-forward” scheme pioneered in Gozo allows theatre-goers to buy an extra seat that is then anonymously donated to a stranger. To date, 1,200 seats have been gifted—proof, organisers say, that the programme is stitching new social fabric after two polarising election cycles.

Applications for next year’s edition open in October, and the whispers have already started: Will Valletta’s abandoned Jesus of Nazareth oratory finally reopen? Can drone choreography work under baroque vaulted ceilings? Whatever the answers, one thing is certain—when the final curtain falls on 15 September, village squares will not return to silence. Instead, they’ll keep humming with the realisation that culture isn’t something you import; it’s something you rehearse in your own backyard, between the stone benches where your nannu once played *brilli*.