Home » Valorizing the Maltese Emergency underground flour mills. Challenges and opportunities for local community
Valorizing the Maltese Emergency underground flour mills. Challenges and opportunities for local community
On Saturday 10th June 2023, from 10.00 to 12.00, the Department for Conservation and Built Heritage, Faculty of the Built Environment of the University of Malta, will host a workshop addressed to local community and NGOs titled “Valorizing Maltese Emergency Underground Flour Mills: Challenges and Opportunities for Local Community”, developed within the COST Action 18110 “Underground Built Heritage as catalyser for Community Valorisation”.
The COST Action, coordinated by the Institute for studies on the Mediterranean of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-ISMed), is aimed at promoting underground built heritage as a valuable resoruce to celebrate and preserve and, when sustainable, reuse and valorize realising its full potential to support the local communities development. The COST Action has delivered five grants for short-tem scientific mission to investigate underground heritage sites in Italy, Cyprus, Switzerland and Malta with the support of hosting Institution. The workshop is developed within the short-term scientific mission carried out by Valeria Catanese, Institute for research on innovation and services for development of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-Iriss).
The Emergency underground flour mills were built in the 1950’s by the British colonial Authorities in 7 top-secret sites – 6 in Malta, 1 in Gozo during the Cold War period. This was meant to supply the community with flour to produce staple food in the event of another war. Although they were never actually used, the underground flour mills represent an important part of the historical, architectural, and industrial heritage of the island. Indeed, for most of them legal protection has been granted for their “outstanding architectural or historical value”. Nevertheless, to keep them alive, collective care and urgent action are needed.
Following the Open Day at Mistra and Mgarr flour mills organized on Sunday 4th June, the upcoming workshop will engage local community and NGOs in a living lab to boost co-creation processes. If you did not participate in the Open Day, you are more than welcome to join this workshop.
Participants will be in a position to share their ideas for the sustainable valorization of the underground flour mills, to identify bottlenecks to the reuse of these sites. A discussion about the possible potential solutions to turn this abandoned heritage into a driver to sustain local development will also be held. A brainstorming session and discussion together with researchers and experts providing different perspectives will be key to reflect on what the possible next actions should be so the underground flour mills will not be lost.
The speakers will be Prof. Giuseppe Pace, the project leader of the Cost Action 18110, researcher at Cnr-ISMed; Valeria Catanese, communication manager Cnr-Iriss, will be presenting the case study of the Catacombs of San Gennaro (Naples, Italy), as an example of good practice of culture-led bottom up regeneration process of an underground religious heritage; Dr Reuben Grima and Dr Shirley Cefai, both Senior Lecturers within the Faculty for the Built Environment, Department for Conservation and Built Heritage of the University of Malta, will take part in the workshop, acting as facilitators for discussion.
To take part in the workshop, registration is mandatory and available here.
Additional resources
If you want to discover more on the Maltese underground flour mills, these videos are suggested.
