The objectives of the project are as follows :
– To raise awareness on the rights of migrants, with regard to the expression of their culture through 1 virtual awareness raising campaign concert and 2 virtual cultural festivals on informing the public on the cultural differences of African diaspora groups in Malta.
– To bring about understanding and acceptance of different cultures amongst different demographics through 5 intergenerational dialogues.

As a means to meet these objectives the project will implement 2 activities, which in addition to targeting these objectives specifically, will also lead to the fulfilment of Outcome 1 of the programme and outputs 1.2 and 1.3. The awareness raising campaigns will be implemented through a virtual concert, virtual cultural festivals all using African musicians and social media campaigns. The virtual cultural concert will be split into two to give it more prominence, as we had planned to have a full day face to face event. Thus the first concert will be held on 25th May to coincide with Africa Day celebrations. Running parallel to these activities will be five intergenerational dialogues which will include cultural aspects such as traditional food and clothing from different African countries and regions which will focus on five different topics as mentioned previously in this application form. The reason intergenerational dialogues are involving cultural food, clothing and other aspects of African culture is to showcase them during the dialogues as due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions the cultural festival cannot take place physically due to social distancing and the restricted number of persons in any given public gathering.

The virtual concert and virtual cultural festival will bring about migrant groups from different African diaspora groups and also members from the local community which are not part of these diaspora groups. These events will be used as a means to showcase the different cultures belonging to African diaspora groups present in Malta, as a means to create awareness about these cultures. This is important when it comes to social inclusion as culture plays a very crucial role within any community.
The virtual concert and cultural festivals will use different musicians based in various countries, who will hire studios and musical instruments to perform their different sets and will get an honorarium for their performances. The aim of this project is to celebrate such cultural diversity by also creating safe spaces for the practice of these cultural traditions and to also bring about awareness about them and their importance for the inclusion of the persons in the community. There is no better way to foster community integration than by sharing a little bit about one’s culture through food, arts, comedy and stories. Activities like the one which will be implemented through this project provide a framework for people to come together, widen their horizons and participate in shared and new interests. This is important as culture influences how people behave and how people understand their own actions.

The intergenerational dialogues will foster debate across persons from different backgrounds and demographics and also include aspects of the project. This will be done to gather a wide range on a number of the different topics which will be discussed during these intergenerational dialogues. The dialogues will target young people, people of mid-age and also seniors. As a result, culturally influenced beliefs and actions feel right to people, even while their implicit underpinnings make it difficult for those people to understand why they act the way they do or why other ways of acting might also be appropriate. It is within this, hopefully, non-threatening and non-didactic framework – loosely defined by creativity, equality and respect of difference – that cultural integration can be negotiated and developed, leading to further inclusion of migrant communities in society. Through the implementation of these activities, the project will lead to an increase in awareness about these cultures, which will be the main target of this project. Through this increased awareness there will be a higher rate of social inclusion in the long-term.

Project implemented by CCIF.
Through Other Eyes benefits from €27,000.00 grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants.