The festival for children and young people is back for a fourth edition promising to magic and fun for adults and children alike.

Taking place from 17-23 November, the festival will feature an amazing 28 productions, including 12 foreign shows from seven different countries. Artists from Spain, France, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands among others, will team up with some of the best Maltese artists to create the only festival in Malta where children and young people are truly at centre stage.

Two particular projects are taking place as part of the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme.

Solo I Bambini ci Salveranno will engage all of Malta’s primary school children giving children, aged between five and 10, the opportunity to express themselves in drawing and painting and to collaborate with an established artist – Austin Camilleri (of Żieme fame) – on a large scale intervention. All the works will be individually digitised, printed and integrated in a public installation, creating an army of individual expressions: a way to occupy the city colourfully and peacefully.

Percussion is at the heart of Valletta 2018 workshops with San Miguel Primary Education Resource Centre. Drums, tambourines, shakers and rattles all have their part to play in this extravaganza of percussion and noise. Peter Paul Galea will lead children through the steps of drumming, beating and shaking, during a fun class, teaching them the basics of rhythm and beat.

ŻiguŻajg will also present, a bedside puppet show on a moving trolley and a performance which creates poetry out of drifting plastic bags in a full of spectacle of colour and imagination.

The festival has an expected audience of 12,000 – half of which will come from schools – who will attend the over 132 events in the week-long programme.

Tickets are available on www.ziguzajg.org. All tickets for the school programme are free of charge; tickets for the public shows are €2 each. 

For more details and updates visit: www.ziguzajg.org, https://www.facebook.com/ziguzajg