“From film to literature, contemporary art spaces to community theatres, pop art and electronic music, to the performing arts, the selected festivals and organisations offer a broad spectrum of activities as well as geographical breadth. Between them, they number thousands in terms of practitioners, volunteers as well as audiences engaged,” a statement said.

The two film bodies which will receive support are the short film festival Kinemastik, which takes place every year in July but has had to reconfigure it’s 2020 plans in the wake of COVID-19, and the Magna Żmien Foundation, otherwise known as the “Maltese time machine”, which works on cataloguing and digitising sound and image home collections.

The ACM’s Investment in Cultural Organisations (ICO) programme aims to encourage professionalisation in the creative sector by guaranteeing financing for three years, from 2020 to 2022. Eleven other NGOs and Foundations are receiving support through the ICO, while a further 13 entities are benefiting through other ACM initiatives.

The ICO builds on ACM’s previous programme, known as the Cultural Partnership Agreement, which ran from 2017 to 2019, and had provided funding to 11 organisations over the three year period, including the Valletta Film Festival (VFF), established by Film Grain Foundation, and the Malta Short Film Festival, organised by the Malta Film Foundation.