The Culture of Ageing is a joint project between the Valletta 2018 Foundation and Leeuwarden 2018, as part of the two cities’ run up to the year 2018. Both cities will be co-hosting the title of European Capital of Culture during the same year.

Following an open call, the Valletta 2018 Foundation, in collaboration with St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, hosted emerging Dutch curators Mare van Koningsveld and Lennard Dost as Valletta’s curators-in-residence between 24th August and 7th September 2014. The Curators in Residence programme was part of last year’s Valletta International Visual Arts (VIVA) Festival and Curatorial School programme. These curators are now handling the ‘Culture of Ageing’ project.

The project’s primary focus is to explore how different cultures look at ageing. The project is divided into several sections including an artists’ exchange programme, exhibition tours, a film and also a lecture programme.

As part of the artist exchange programme, local artist Adrian Abela went to Groningen to research and collaborate with ERIBA (European Research Institute on the Biology of Ageing), an entity which tries to better understand the causes of ageing through research. In August, Frisian artist Femke Bakker will be coming to Malta to develop new work for the project.