In late February 2020, Curiosa's team travelled to Malta to collaborate on a groundbreaking community project with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. Over the course of a weekend, Curiosa leaders Filipe Sousa and Kate Smith worked with a select group of musicians from The Malta Youth Orchestra, as well as with members of the Maltese Active Ageing Community, to begin creating new music inspired by Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

Over the subsequent week, visual artist Beatriz M Barrio met with the Active Ageing community to film material to create accompanying video art. As originally planned, everyone would then come together on a subsequent weekend in March to finish work on the music and videos, ultimately creating an audio-visual and live music performance. Unfortunately due to concerns around Covid-19, the final part of the project had to be suspended.

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However, despite the project being cut short, the Curiosa team was still able to create three videos from material gathered during the first half of the workshop, in lieu of the live performance. Even working from half formed ideas, the results are striking, showing the extent of the creativity and musicianship displayed in those initial workshops. 

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It was a pleasure and an honour to work with both the participants and the producers of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra Community Project. Even as the arts struggle to find their footing in this time of pandemic, the short films created from this project and the memories they recall for us, remind us of the power of creativity, stories, and the human spirit.