If I am honest, when I first decided to attend International Journalism Festival (#IJF26) in Perugia, it was for three reasons:

• In-person networking after a bout of LinkedIn-fatigue

• A desire to understand what on earth AI is doing to the industry

• An urgent need to visit the home of Baci chocolates

Side note: If you haven’t tried Baci chocolates, you absolutely must. A whole hazelnut perched atop a hazelnut-chocolate praline and enveloped in a layer of yet more choc. What’s not to like? My Maltese side of the family is obsessed with Baci, and I clearly got that gene, too. ANYWAY, I digress.

Having now been to #IJF26, which, by the way, is free to attend and requires no registration, here are my first three key takeaways. I have linked to the talks that really inspired me, so you can watch them on playback, too.

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1. Difficult deep-dive storytelling requires patience

The best things come to those who wait. Sitting in the small auditorium of PostModernissimo at the screening of Sam Piranty’s The Darkest Web, a harrowing but fascinating BBC Eye documentary about infiltrating online networks of child abusers, this became abundantly clear. This documentary was seven years in the making. The undercover investigators featured in the film were potentially putting themselves and their families in danger by participating. It was essential to build trust to make the most out of this unprecedented access. It was about making the agents feel able to open up about the impact of their work — both on their mental health and the wider community.

The timescale of the production allowed for some of the narrative arcs to come full circle: a victim nicknamed “Lucy”, who is rescued by the detectives as a child, meets with investigator Greg Squire at the end of the documentary. They sit on a park bench and discuss how she is trying to move forward with her life. It’s a vulnerable, interpersonal moment that would never have occurred if the film had been made in a hurry. This BBC Eye documentary for Storyville and World of Secrets had the funding to make this patient storytelling possible. And it paid off.

In an age of speed and forgettable short-form content, the true value of slowness has become undeniable. The stories that stay with me are thoughtfully told and invest time in allowing interview subjects to open up naturally. Here’s the full documentary via the BBC World Service YouTube Channel and the related World of Secrets podcast. I will be interviewing Sam Piranty for a future piece on here about making documentaries on sensitive subject matter, so stay tuned.

2. Massive reach doesn’t necessarily mean better journalism

I’m sitting in the audience of “You Heard It Here First: The Judges of the European Press Prize”. The talk is held in the beautiful setting of Teatro della Sapienza. My eyes wander to the wall, and I read the phrase commovendo esalta (by moving the heart, it exalts) painted above one of the doors. This phrase gains new relevance when panel member Clara Jimenez Cruz, co-founder and CEO of Maldita, says, “We are reaching less and less people every day. So, we might need to think of other ways of referring to impactful journalism that is not necessarily readership. (…) One of the things that is feeling more and more significant to me as I go through the shortlist is the human factor — (…) how much something moves me.”

This resonated with me. It feels like our goals have become too numerical. It’s all about metrics, trending content, volume and reach rather than heartfelt stories. Of course, journalism has the potential to make an impact, and it can only do that if it reaches people, but does it have to slot into an addictive ecosystem engineered by some tech bros to reach that goal? Is what’s really missing adequate funding for independent investigative journalism? Probably, yes.

But it’s also a lack of interdisciplinary learning. Traditional journalism shouldn’t only look within its own field for inspiration. To innovate, it should look beyond it — where many of the people it wants to reach are working in different professions. For example, the film industry uses platforms like Netflix, where viewers choose what they watch and when they watch it, basically curating their own experience.

People want more autonomy over what they consume, and a multi-outlet journalistic platform like this could provide access to high-quality, accurate, human-centred stories. I think it’s about trusting we know how to move people and creating a more appealing, accessible, easy-to-use, international platform. The addiction-based information-saturated approach isn’t conducive to genuine emotional connection. We need to rethink the format to allow connection to happen.

3. Live journalism is growing, but will it remain in theatres or take to the streets?

There were several talks about live journalism, something I confess I had never heard of before attending the festival. Live journalism comes in many formats. It can be journalists on stage unpacking the story behind the story they told. This is Live Magazine’s preferred format.

During the talk “How to turn journalists into rockstars: a Live Magazine Showcase”, three journalists got up on stage with projected supporting imagery to illustrate their experience of getting a story they had submitted to their respective outlets. Doan Bui, a reporter at Le Nouvel Obs, told us how she attended Flat Earth International Conference in the US for research for a piece. And artist and photographer Tomas van Houtryve explained how he went undercover as a chocolate salesman to be allowed entry to North Korea for a story.

Other initiatives, like Mensagem de Lisboa, specialize in hyperlocal monthly live journalism that brings the people of Lisbon from every walk of life on stage to tell their stories. In Spain, Diario Vivo sees journalists and protagonists treading the boards to tell real-life stories. And in Germany, the creators of Headliner gUG were inspired by poetry slams to create a similar format called “Reporter Slam”, where journalists battle it out in a short-format competition. Headliner has even created JIVE, a live journalism show, where journalism is presented on stage with a live orchestra. And Germany’s CORRECTIV showcases investigative journalism in a live format to combat a growing disengagement with the news.

One thing is clear: as post-pandemic humans, we are craving greater real-life connection. I went to every single talk about live journalism at #IJF26 because these talks filled me with hope that we will begin to share stories in a more meaningful way again. I love the theatre, and I think the format is wonderful, but my one concern is that this will be an elite form of journalism that is only accessible to those who are able to pay for a ticket. I would love to see shows like these in public spaces, too. Of course, money needs to be made to make it sustainable, but I wonder if occasional donation-based shows in parks, on beaches or in skate parks might one day be an option. Mensagem de Lisboa already offers free shows to the local community, so it seems some initiatives are already moving in that direction.

I will follow this up with another post with more takeaways from #IJF26 in the not-too-distant future. There is still lots to cover, but I wanted to break this down into bite-size chunks to avoid overwhelm. Do watch the talks back and comment your thoughts below. Let’s cross-pollinate, baby.

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This is an old one that I recently unearthed. It won third prize in the 2018 Hastings Week Poetry Competition, which was very exciting. Here’s my ode to the British summer. It’s nice to be comfortably sharing this from my living room in Valencia, where the outside temperature is 32 degrees.

Seaside Shenanigans

Supposedly starved seagulls swoop
down upon tentative gobblers
emerging from the chippy.

Summer’s final rays beat down,
and shutting their eyes,
windbathers dream themselves
from Rock-a-Nore to Rio.

Their aching, pebble-bruised feet
longing for soft sand and warmth...
But in their heart of hearts,
they love the bracing British summer,

And if they really were in Rio,
they would likely moan of
burnt bottoms and heatstroke.

We may groan and sigh
but really we can see why
ol’ Will the Conq’ went the extra mile.
So we chug on a Stella and smile...

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And here’s a piece on Fairlight, the Hastings-adjacent countryside, where I used to enjoy childhood rambles and picnics. There was an abandoned house that had half-fallen into the sea that we sometimes used to pass by. This is a poem about that place. I have embellished it for dramatic effect, but the toilet that ended up halfway down the cliff was very real. And coastal erosion, I need not tell you, continues to tear away at buildings. This one was featured in Seaside Gothic a few years ago. Enjoy!

Memories of Fairlight

A rusty oven protruded out of the rubble.
Someone had cooked on that stove once,
lived within those walls,
laughed in that kitchen.

They had stained their lips
red with glasses of wine
while listening to Southern FM.

Now, the wind and the sea
had taken half the house captive
and ramblers traversed the tiles
in trainers and walking boots—
suddenly pensive and quiet.

The remains of the wall were
a faded shade of apricot.
Angry spray paint screamed,
FUCK CAPITALISM
in blood-red tones.

Peering over the edge of the cliff,
passers-by eyed the surging beast
below as it slowly ripped
the stone away
from under
their
feet.

It was a steady work in progress
that only relented with the tide.

Like a bow on the string of a violin’s
moonlit serenade, the sea,
held in the clutches of that great
nightly ghost, would return with
the precision of the hand that guided it.

One-by-one, particles would surrender,
turning rock into sinking ships,
pulled downwards by
gravity’s firm embrace.

The sea would wave goodbye.
The wind would howl into
the doorless kitchen cabinets,
and the gulls would caw
around the cove.

Routinely, clouds would gather for the final rites
and season the sea with salty tears.

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Melita Cameron-Wood is a freelance journalist, editor, and voice-over artist who writes poems and short stories. Particularly interested in nature and everyday human interactions, Melita uses writing as a way of processing thoughts and surroundings.

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After eating the bougiest daisy-adorned Bratwurst mit Sauerkraut I have ever encountered at Globo Restaurant, I made my way to the Amber Museum, Nuremberg. It’s an unassuming place, housed in a repurposed ground-floor flat on Tucherstraße. I’ve been to Nuremberg several times, as I used to live in nearby Ingolstadt, but this is my first time here.

I had recently discovered that an over 3,000-year-old amber necklace had been unearthed in Ingolstadt in 1996 when a car park was being constructed for AUDI AG. I saw the necklace, which is made up of 2700 beads, at Ingolstadt’s Stadtmuseum and became fascinated by the connection between Bavaria and amber, one of my favourite organic gemstones. The necklace is a reminder of the ancient Amber Road (Bernsteinstraße). This trade route transformed Bronze Age Europe by connecting distant places through the transport of amber from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean.

A trade hub

After a bit of digging, I found out that Nuremberg used to be an important hub for the historic amber trade, as it was positioned on a crossroads for merchants pedalling their wares across Europe. Metal tools and scientific instruments made in Nuremberg were exported to countries like Poland and Portugal. And the raw materials for Nuremberg’s metalwork industry were imported from Hungary and Bohemia. Fine cloths were also imported from Venice and the Netherlands. And along with furs and salted fish, amber was imported from the Baltic.

Back in the 1400s, the Baltic amber trade was taken over by the Teutonic Order. Amber was exchanged for other products, such as spices, cloth, lead, copper and wax. And two towns emerged as vital trading centres: Königsberg (modern-day Kaliningrad) and Danzig (now known as Gdańsk).

The owner of Nuremberg’s Amber Museum, Janusz Henn, has strong personal ties to Gdańsk, where he and his late father sourced many of the items on display in the museum. “It’s a wonderful city,” he tells me, his eyes aglow with nostalgia. “And it’s the home of amber, of course.”

The Amber Room

Upon entering the museum, I am greeted by framed pictures of the Amber Room, which has often been dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. This room, which was adorned with amber and gold, was originally located in Potsdam. Back in 1716, however, Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm I gave the Amber Room to Russian Tsar Peter the Great. In exchange for this generous diplomatic gesture, Peter the Great gave the Prussian King 55 highly skilled Russian soldiers.

For 225 years, the Amber Room was housed in Pushkin, at Catherine Palace. However, in World War II, when the Nazis advanced into the Soviet Union, the Amber Room was looted and “confiscated” by the German army. They clearly recognized its high value. In fact, the Amber Room has an estimated modern-day value of over 200 million euros, according to Deutsche Welle. Packed up in crates, its contents were sent to Königsberg, where it was displayed in Königsberg Castle in 1941.

However, when it became clear that the German Reich was set to lose the war, the Amber Room mysteriously disappeared and is thought to have been hidden somewhere for safe storage by the Nazis. To this day, the exact location of the original Amber Room decoration is unknown. Amber aficionados have to make do with the reconstruction at Catherine Palace, which is undeniably impressive, even if not the original.

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The Museum

While the Amber Room was a display of wealth, designed to make jaws drop at its splendour, Nuremberg’s Amber Museum is a love letter to this organic gemstone. Janusz Henn co-founded the museum and Hemis Art Collection with his father, Horst Henn. The pair grew their collection and made it available to the public after years of sourcing unique pieces. Bernstein, the German word for amber, derives from the Middle Low German word Börnsteen, meaning “burning stone”. And this place seems to be the physical manifestation of a burning passion for amber.

Everywhere I look, I see varying tones ranging from cognac to yellow to burgundy red. Some stones contain remnants of past lives: grasshoppers, mosquitoes, bees, beetles and termites. It strikes me that amber itself is a natural museum of sorts. As if reading my thoughts, Janusz shows me a large spider encased in amber: “If you think about it, this piece is around 40,000 to 50,000 years old. It’s like a message from the past.”

Janusz tells me that amber is between 40 and 120 million years old. It is formed from the resins of coniferous trees. And these deposits become fossilised as a result of the pressure of rock layers and water. “Amber can be found in the whole of Europe, but not to the same extent as it can be in the Baltic Sea region,” Janusz explains. “For example, in Austria, there is a place that is even called Bernstein. Now, there’s no amber left there, but the story is interesting because the Alps are much younger than amber. The Alps are around 45 to 65 million years old, but amber can be much older than that. So, the amber was there first, then the Alps pushed it upwards.”

The museum is filled with neatly arranged glass cabinets showcasing everything from amber models of ships and religious artefacts to amber pipes. “I actually found out that amber pipes were produced locally here in Nuremberg around 200 years ago,” Janusz tells me. It turns out that the oldest and largest tobacco pipe manufacturer in Germany is based in Nuremberg: VAUEN. They historically produced a line of smoking pipes with amber stems. While these are no longer produced, pipe enthusiasts can visit the factory for tours to find out more about the history of pipe production.

Looking up from the various amber pipes, I am struck by the sheer size of the museum’s pride and joy: the biggest piece of amber in Germany. Encased in a large glass case, a huge chunk of fossilised resin weighing 12.41 kilograms stands proudly by the window. It is thought to have come from a tree that was over 100 metres tall and 15 metres wide. Given that it is unusual to find pieces of amber that weigh more than 100 grams, this was a rare find.

Surrounded by all this amber, I begin to wonder about the authenticity of the amber ring on my index finger. I bought it a while ago on Etsy from an Indonesian artisanal company. I show it to Janusz, who casts his expert eye over it and tells me it is indeed genuine. Relieved that I haven’t been scammed, I ask him how real amber can actually be distinguished from fake amber.

As if waiting for this moment, Janusz takes a bowl of saltwater with various stones in it out of a cabinet. Some of the pieces are floating and others are sitting resolutely at the bottom of the container. “Real amber is lighter than saltwater. Fakes tend to be made of plastics or other synthetics, which are heavier. The fakes are at the bottom of the tub,” he tells me. Genuine amber has a specific weight of around 1.08 to 1.1 g/cubic centimetre. It is also flammable and gives off the scent of resin. “When you rub real amber,” Janusz says, “it becomes electrostatically charged. So, if you leave small shreds of paper next to it, they will become attracted to it.”

At the cash desk, I see a box of raw, unpolished amber pieces. They are beautiful, but a stark contrast to the carefully crafted amber ornaments and jewellery on display. But both the natural and processed amber have something in common — they emit a warm glow when the light hits them. Holding a piece in my hand, I can understand amber’s timeless appeal.

After bidding farewell to Janusz, I stand across the street from the museum for a moment. This place, founded by a father and son in 1991, houses a painstakingly sourced collection of approximately 1,450 pieces of amber. It’s the fruit of patience and perseverance. And come to think of it, that isn’t a world away from the slow fossilisation of resin into amber.

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This newsletter is written and curated by Melita Cameron-Wood, a self-employed writer, journalist, audio producer, voiceover artist and EFL educator based in Valencia, Spain. If you enjoyed reading this reader-supported publication, please consider subscribing or sharing with a friend.

Before you enter a prize for the creative arts, it helps to know a little more about the organisation behind it. I spoke to Kieran Lynn, the winner of The Alpine Fellowship’s 2018 Theatre Prize for his play The Perfectly Timed Death of an Imaginary Friend, which was inspired by the theme of “childhood”. These days, Lynn is the Executive Director of The Alpine Fellowship. Here, you’ll find out about this year’s theme, the creative community and why newcomers should still consider participating.

MCEW: For people who have never heard of The Alpine Fellowship, please could you explain what it is and what its purpose is?
KL: We are a charitable foundation that supports, commissions and showcases artists, writers, academics and playwrights. Each year, we discover and support artists through our arts and academic prizes, including the Music Prize, Poetry Prize, Theatre Prize, Writing Prize and Visual Art Prize.

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MCW: This year’s theme is “joy” and applicants have until 1 July to submit their work. Can you explain why this theme feels especially relevant this year?
KL: Joy is something that humans need and crave at all times; however, this need does become more pronounced at times of global unrest. At the moment, we are surrounded by bad news, both because of world events and because of the constant flow of information. It’s crucial to balance this flow of difficult information with access to joy, and we believe the arts are uniquely positioned to deliver it.

MCW: If someone is on the fence about submitting their work because they are not yet established in their field, what would you tell them?
KL: In the past, we have had winners who are right at the beginning of their careers, so even if you are not yet established, you should consider entering. Everyone has to start somewhere, and winning a prize like this can be the ideal way to attract a wider audience to your work.

MCW: Other than funding and prestige, what can a creative community like The Alpine Fellowship offer successful applicants?
KL: Winning a prize with us is not just a transaction; you become part of our community. Even now, we are regularly in touch with winners from many years ago, and we love to support their work in whatever way we can. That might be attending performances or exhibitions, or helping to publish new work via our social media channels or website. We want to support artists and writers, and we know that is best achieved through long-term relationships.

MCW: Any final words of advice before applicants hit “send”?
KL: The theme of 2026 is “joy”, but the theme of every year could well be “courage”. It takes a remarkable amount of courage to complete your work and to submit it to a contest like ours, but it is that act of courage that every artist or writer has to commit to. Every book you’ve ever loved, a piece of music that inspires you or a painting that moves you, was once exclusively the property of the artist, and in all cases, it took that moment of courage to share it with the world. Be brave and take that step. Who knows where it might lead you?

Important information:

The Alpine Fellowship has a £10 submission fee per entry. The winner and runners-up of each prize category will receive financial support in the following amounts:

First place: £3,000

Second place: £1,000

Third place: £1,000

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Originally featured in DUTCH The Magazine in 2024. This piece has been republished with minor updates with permission from the original publisher. Thanks to the editor of the original piece, Paola Westbeek. Words and interviews by yours truly, Melita Cameron-Wood. This is a reader-supported newsletter, so please consider subscribing or buying me a “coffee” if you enjoy receiving this in your inbox.

The Nijmegen 4Days Marches, also known as ‘The Walk of the World,’ attract over 45,000 participants annually. Walkers can choose whether they want to walk thirty, forty or fifty kilometres per day (approximately eighteen, twenty-five and thirty-one miles), depending on their fitness levels—and how much they want to party upon their arrival in Nijmegen, where the route always starts and ends.

The event has undergone a radical transformation since its humble beginnings over 120 years ago. Originally conceived as a stamina-building activity for Dutch soldiers, the first 4Days Marches, which took place in 1909, had just 306 participants. There were ten different points of departure, all of which were army barracks. The walkers marched fifteen alternate routes before joining forces again in Breda, a city in the province of North Brabant, in the southern part of the Netherlands.

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The number of routes turned out to be an organisational headache, so the subsequent year, all event participants started from the same place and walked the same route. In 1910, the chosen point of departure was Arnhem. It was only in 1925, after the walkers had tried out various starting points, including Den Bosch, Utrecht and Amersfoort, that the organisation settled on Nijmegen as the start and the end of the routes on each day. This decision was based upon the varied hikes around the town and the impressive hospitality shown to the walkers—brown beans, bacon, a bath and a bed can go a long way, it seems!

The 4Days Marches have also seen many landmark moments over the years, but the early 1980s were a particularly tumultuous time. Several protests were organised by the group of activists, Is het hier oorlog? (Are we at war?), which took a stand against the military style of the event.

The activist group was disqualified in 1984, as they chose not to cross the military bridge in Cuijk, a town near Nijmegen, out of principle. This sparked a debate in parliament and raised some tricky questions for the Dutch Ministry of Defence. In the early 1980s, anti-gay riots also took place at the Nijmegen Marches. In reaction to this, the event was transformed into one of the country’s biggest LGBTIQ+ celebrations, with the second day of the event now called ‘Pink Wednesday’ in celebration of inclusivity and acceptance.

In 1989, the first Russian soldiers participated in the event, and they were given accommodation in the same camp as American soldiers, Camp Heumensoord. Photographer Jan van Teeffelen famously took an iconic snapshot of a female American soldier kissing a Russian soldier during the event, which became a symbol of the end of the Cold War. In 1995, wheelchair users were allowed to participate for the first time, but there was some controversy around this, as these participants technically were not completing the event on foot. The organisational body only started awarding wheelchair users the official 4Days Marches Cross from 2009 onward.

To avoid overcrowding, the organisers introduced a limit to the number of participants allowed to take part in the event in 2005, as they noticed that the number of people signing up was too high for the infrastructure of Nijmegen. In its history, it has only been called off midway through the event once, in 2006, when record temperatures led to the hospitalisation of multiple walkers and the deaths of two participants. Since this tragedy, the event organisers have worked closely with a meteorologist and regularly inform walkers about the conditions they can expect during the 4Days Marches.

People travel from far and wide to participate in the event and often do so in groups to raise funds for charitable causes. UK breast cancer charity Walk the Walk is an example of such an initiative. They have been sending groups of walkers to the Nijmegen Marches for years, many of whom have a personal connection to cancer, whether that be through the loss of a loved one or their personal battle with the disease.

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Seventy-year-old Canadian Mike Colbourne, who has now recovered from stage 4 bladder cancer, participated in the Nijmegen Marches with the Walk the Walk team in 2023. And he has become a regular participant. His participation in the event marks the fulfilment of a goal he set himself many years ago. “The Nijmegen Marches were always on my bucket list. I first found out about them in 1995. My mother and I were in Holland for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands,” Colbourne recalls. “My mum lost both brothers in the war. Her brother, Cecil Stanley Wharton, was a grenadier guardsman, killed close to Nijmegen. He was buried there and then moved to Groesbeek Cemetery.”

When Colbourne recovered from cancer after participating in an immunotherapy study, he knew he had to seize his chance to turn his dream into reality. His original plan was to march with the Canadian Legion, but as the Canadian army didn’t march in 2023 due to COVID-19, he went online and discovered Walk the Walk. “Our team was amazing. I was probably twenty years older than the rest of them,” Colbourne comments. “The most emotional moment I had was when our team stopped at Groesbeek Cemetery, where we laid Canadian flags on my uncle’s grave while the Last Post was being played.”

Other participants from the local area have fond memories of the event and have passed their enthusiasm on to younger generations. Astrid van der Looij, a local from Nijmegen, first participated in the event with friends from university in 1993, shortly after her graduation. “We had done our training, but it was still hard. I remember we cried together when we reached the finish line. We were exhausted,” she said.

The experience did not put her off, though, and she signed up again two years later with her partner Haaije Postma. Fast-forward to the present day, and they have now participated as parents with all three of their children. Ben, their youngest son, joined the event in 2022 for the first time at the age of twelve, the age from which participants are permitted to do thirty kilometres (eighteen miles) per day. “When I am tired and my feet are aching, I tell myself it is only a few more kilometres,” Ben commented.

“The hardest part was the last seven kilometres (four miles) on the Via Gladiola. The best part was the hilly zevenheuvelenweg (Seven Hills Road) between Groesbeek and Nijmegen.” As Ben’s parents are on the board of the charity Steppenomaden Mongolië (an organisation that raises money to support the Steppe nomad community in Sogog, Mongolia), he is using his participation in the Nijmegen Marches to raise money for this cause.

This year’s 4Days Marches are due to take place from 21 to 24 July. Like every year, walkers will descend upon the town of Nijmegen for a memorable sporting event that sees them push their physical boundaries, gather in groups and support each other to the finish line. During the festivities, walkers and non-walkers can enjoy live music, food, theatre, dancing and market stalls set up throughout town. In short, in the words of Astrid van der Looij, “It is hard not to have a good time!”

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If you work as a journalist or content creator, you need to check out Qwoted. Why? Because it will make your life abundantly easier. When I was asked to find eight interview partners who had done intercultural business with Germans for an article for Business Spotlight (ZEIT SPRACHEN) on a tight deadline, where did I head? Well, a number of places, if I am honest: Qwoted, X (yes, controversial, I know), and LinkedIn. PR agencies, such as Editorielle, Media Matters, and Pitch and Shout all do a great job, and they helped me out, too. But I have to say that Qwoted is one of the most efficient places for finding credible sources within a short space of time — no matter how niche the request. It has saved my bacon many times.

Through the platform, I’ve found olive oil distribution experts, clinical psychologists, and EFL learners doing business in English to name but a few examples. I caught up with Chloe Kim, the editor-in-chief at Qwoted, to break down what this platform is all about for you lovely folks. Try it out, and tell me about your experience in the comments. Now, without further ado, let’s dive right in.

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MCW: For writers and journalists who haven’t heard of Qwoted, why should they start using it?
CK: I know firsthand what it’s like to have an editor, at 9 am, tell you they want an expert interview done in two hours. I’ve been on both sides (video and writing), and both present unique challenges. Of course, it’s theoretically possible...but there’s quite a bit of a frenzy. You’re reaching out to university media offices, past contacts and doing Google searches, all in an effort to secure just one expert within your deadline. Qwoted streamlines this process and cuts the time, and your stress, in half. It can be beneficial in any reporter’s workflow, whether you’re an assistant producer or a senior writer. I wish I knew about it when I was in the newsroom.

MCW: Can you explain the difference between Qwoted and Qwoted Media?
CK: Qwoted Media is the editorial arm of Qwoted, and our beat is the press. Our Qwoted Media social channels are where you can find content on insights, trends and threats in the media world in addition to interviews with journalists, where we discuss their background, history and more.
Meanwhile, the Qwoted social accounts focus more on the PR and expert side of the community. We share our upcoming events on both.

MCW: What does a day in your life as editor-in-chief of Qwoted look like?
CK: Luckily, it can vary quite a bit! But that’s what keeps it exciting. I’ll often have various video interviews scheduled with journalists who I’ve reached out to and coordinated with. Following interviews, there are chunks of time when I’m editing and scheduling content for our different social platforms. Then there are some days where I get to film some content in-person, which is always a treat. For instance, on my first day, I went to Brooklyn College with our Qwoted CEO, Dan Simon, who was scheduled to speak to an undergraduate journalism class. I got to interview the professor and some students on the state of journalism right out of the gate. As a journalist, it’s always rewarding to get out in the field.

MCW: Do you have any insider tips on how to get the most out of Qwoted?
CK: A great resource on Qwoted is checking out the ‘Story Ideas’ function, which highlights new angles to cover from experts who are willing and able to share their expertise.

I’d also suggest that media folks use the ‘Grow Your Audience’ function. You can share your published works, which allows experts in the network to familiarize themselves with the sort of topics you cover and, in turn, they will know what ideas will pique your interest going forward.

If you post one source request on the platform, Qwoted sends you a free coffee or makes a donation to Reporters Without Borders in your name! You pick whichever option you prefer.

MCW: Can you share a couple of tips with aspiring writers for turning ideas into actual articles/content?
CK: Well, I think it can be a bit different if you are pitching to an outlet versus writing for your own blog or Substack. There are some similarities, though.

There’s no way around doing your research. It’s imperative for accuracy. I would also recommend including experts, whose voice adds another layer of credibility and authority to the piece. In addition to experts, having human voices really helps the piece sing. It humanizes the issue in a way that a one-dimensional story can’t do.

Going over the piece with fresh eyes, after stepping away from the writing, will help you notice errors and where there are places to cut.

MCW: How has the process of finding credible sources and interview partners for comment evolved for journalists in recent years?
CK: It’s changed dramatically over the years as technology has shifted. Of course, years ago, ringing someone on the phone was the only way to contact sources, and that was if you had them in your Rolodex or could locate them in Yellow Pages.

At the start of my career, there were a lot of Google searches and parsing through who looked legitimate and aligned with my story need. I often found that even if I called someone, the media office would refer you to an email, and who knows who was monitoring that!

Now, there are platforms like Qwoted that cut all those unnecessary steps out. You can explicitly lay out your story needs on the site, walk away from it and come back an hour later to find various sources/experts (with impressive backgrounds!) ready and able to assist.

With more newsrooms trimming staffing, but editors asking the same things of reporters, to secure experts on deadline, Qwoted is a time-saving game changer.

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Shout out to the lovely Callie Chambers, chief media ambassador at Qwoted, for setting up this interview. You rock.

If you work as an editor or run a writing group or an initiative that supports writers, editors and creatives, then get in touch for an opportunity to be featured. Let’s help each other out. It’s a mad world out there.

Happy International Dance Day, everyone. Whether you’re having a boogie in the kitchen or waltzing in a ballroom in Vienna, this curated dance-themed itinerary is for anyone who has ever moved to a beat — no judgment if you trod on someone’s toes in the process. Dance is a feeling as much as it is discipline and hamstring stretching. That’s why this tour around some of Europe’s best dance locations may surprise you.

“Dance lives in bodies more than buildings and that makes it tricky to pin down,” Katerina Pantelides (@katerinamuses), a British/ Greek-Cypriot writer and dance historian living in San Sebastián, told me when I first approached her about this topic. I came across her profile by way of her monthly answers to reader questions, through the lens of what the study of Russian ballet has taught her. Intriguing. It turns out she has a PhD on Russian émigré ballet and the body c. 1920-50 from The Courtauld Institute of Art, too. “You might find the best flamenco of your life in a London theatre, a Russian ballerina’s shoes in a Lisbon museum and breakdancing on Bavarian streets,” she told me.

This response made me even more certain that Katerina was exactly the right person to share her top recommendations for must-see dance locations and events around Europe. I wasn’t sure what her list would contain, but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d have bet it’d be eclectic and intercultural.

I wasn’t wrong. Let’s jive right in.

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1. London: The Rivoli Ballroom & Laban Dance Centre

Melita Cameron-Wood (MCW): You grew up in the sprawling, intercultural city of London. If you had to pinpoint a couple of places that really celebrate dance in that city, where would they be?
Katerina Pantelides (KP): You could see dance every night of the year in London. Its theatres showcase everything from ballet to musical jazz numbers to avant-garde contemporary and some nightclubs even host the remains of 90s rave culture. But two gems from the southeast of the city really stand out to me: the first is The Rivoli Ballroom, which retains its 1950s décor and transports you to the past with nights of swing, reggae and northern soul. Next, dream like a dancer of the future at the Laban Dance Centre in Deptford. With its rainbow-hued structure, spiral staircases and wavy landscaped grounds (perfect for picnicking, voguing or rolling down), the campus is itself on the move.

2. Paris: Musée d’Orsay, Impressionist paintings and Argentinian tango

MCW: I see you included Paris in your list. When I think of Paris and dance, my mind goes to the world-renowned Opéra National de Paris, but I see it’s a museum that really caught your attention. Tell me more.
KP: Yes, Paris is a leading venue for dance companies worldwide, of course. But my prime Parisian dance memories circle around the Musée d’Orsay. By day, you can peer into authentic nineteenth-century ballet studios through the Impressionist paintings of Edgar Degas and by night, you can dance the Argentinian tango in the museum grounds. Even if you’re a beginner, there are pros who will sweep you off your feet.

3. Athens: Parthenon, followed by a night at one of the city’s bouzoukia

MCW: If someone wants to really experience dance in Athens, where should they start?
KP: By day, I’d recommend visiting the Parthenon, spiritual home of Isadora Duncan, mother of the natural dance movement. Today, you may find her disciples dancing among the ruins and posing like Greek statues. By night, throw caution (and a few plates) to the wind in one of the city’s bouzoukia, Greek nightclubs with live performances, where you will dance all night to Greek music, popular and traditional. If you want to wear out your shoe leather, Athens is the place.

4. Basque Country: Tamborrada & cross-border salsa

MCW: You live in the Basque Country. Are there any events there that really have you tapping your toes?
KP: There is a stereotype in the rest of Spain that Basques don’t dance. But you’ll find them rising to the occasion in traditional costume on Basque holidays such as Tamborrada, an annual drum festival, where you can treat yourself to the spectacle of chefs getting their groove on with giant forks in hand. Also, when you travel to Hendaye and Irun, the towns on either side of the Franco-Spanish border, you can participate in a number of cross-border salsa classes. These Latin dance events are advertised in boulangeries and train stations, and represent the fascinating interplay of cultures in this region: Basque, French and Latin American.

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5. Stockholm: Dansmuseet

MCW: I admit I was a little surprised when I saw Stockholm on the list, as it isn’t a place I would typically associate with dance. I’d love to hear what made you include this one.
KP: I visited Stockholm in darkest December, when the sun set around three in the afternoon. I remember freezing drizzle, tiny wooden Christmas decorations and midnight-blue cafes. But dance lovers should make sure not to miss Stockholm’s dance museum, founded by Rolf de Maré, a visionary who brought the avant-garde Ballets Suédois to Paris in the 1920s. You can find modernist costumes and sets in the museum, as well as artefacts from worldwide dance traditions.

6. Vienna: 450 balls later, you can put your feet up

MCW: There was a Viennese guy in one of my classes at university. He used to always tell me tales of sneaking into balls in his home city when he was underage. It was a far cry from my attempts at getting into a seedy seafront nightclub in Brighton at 17. Vienna simply had to be on the list. What should dance enthusiasts definitely include in their plan in the Austrian capital?
KP: Nowhere else will you encounter such a range of languages or furs. As a people-watcher, Vienna has my heart for attracting a confluence of visitors from Italy, Eastern Europe and the rest of the German-speaking world to its Christmas markets. If you are visiting between November and February, you simply have to attend one of the 450 balls. You’ll get a chance to waltz right where the once scandalous dance was invented in the late 18th century. Go, make plum jam one of your five a day and dance until you’re swinging from one of the many chandeliers in your authentic nineteenth-century ballroom.

7. Andalucía: Feria de Abril, Flamenco Museum, Noche Blanca del Flamenco

MCW: I love the drama and intrigue of flamenco, so I was very happy to see Andalucía made the cut — it is the birthplace of flamenco, after all.
KP: On my list is the Feria de Abril, in Seville, along with a visit to the city’s Flamenco Museum featuring costumes, paintings and demonstrations. But if it’s flamenco in a more intimate setting you’re after, then try Córdoba’s Noche Blanca del Flamenco, which typically takes place in June. It’s a good idea to plan your trip to a flamenco feria months in advance, so you can sort accommodation and costumes and maybe even do a YouTube sevillana tutorial.

8. Prague: Tančící dům (Dancing House)

MCW: I love that you included this architectural masterpiece. Dancing House is a great example of how motion can be preserved in a static building. And it’s a great option for dance enthusiasts with two left feet like me.
KP: Right? Did I say that dance was more present in bodies than buildings? Well, I might change my mind if I find myself cheek-to-cheek with Dancing House, also known as Fred and Ginger. Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry’s Dancing House is a beautiful homage to the famous twentieth-century ballroom dancers.

If you enjoyed this, then why not shimmy across to ’s Substack and subscribe? Every month, she answers reader questions through the lens of what she learned from Russian ballet. Excuse me, while I pirouette off into the middle distance now. Keep that spring in your step, you kooky cats.

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28 April, 2025: The Day the Lights Went Out

I’m writing this with a pen and paper. My computer has died and my phone is basically non-responsive. Well, at least it has no internet. It still has 63 per cent battery. Let’s see how long that lasts.

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I was at home, working on the monthly audio production I do for a German client. The VPN suddenly beeped to notify me I had no connection. I ran to the fuse box. Did I have a faulty appliance? I checked whether my rabbits had nibbled a wire, but nothing.

Why am I writing this on the couch? I’ll continue in the park.

The park is full of life. People having picnics, children playing. Nearly every bench is occupied. The gurgling coos of pigeons accompany readers. Pigeons are none the wiser. Mating rituals continue in the dappled light under the poplars. Today, the trams are not running. In their place, just security vehicles driving up and down the tramway.

I ate lunch with my neighbours today and listened to the sound of sirens as we ate our caldo, Spanish stew. My old neighbour opened the drinks cabinet. I foolishly thought the internet had come back, so I said, “I’d better return home after lunch.”

My flat felt eerily empty, or perhaps it was my mind that was empty rather than my flat: no emails, no notifications, no music, deadlines I could do nothing about, rooms with only natural light. The toilet without a window was pitch black.

News outlets start contacting me, asking for updates. The messages arrive sporadically, but I can’t always respond. My responses remain pending, somewhere in the strange world of the internet that I know so little about. The mechanics of it, at least. I know I’m probably addicted to it, along with a good proportion of the global population.

I realised all of a sudden that I’d be without a job, without the internet. This unforeseen holiday might sound fun, but it is eerie. I wonder whether to contact a friend before realising that I can’t. I could just turn up at their door unannounced, I suppose. That’s what people did in the past.

Why does this level of disorganisation feel foreign? I suppose the digital world has made life predictable and scheduling has entered every realm of life. I even arranged specific call times to speak on the phone with friends. Spontaneity and unpredictable outcomes have become a rare occurrence.

I suddenly forget whether occurrence is spelt with one “r” or two. No spell check here, no checking facts.

I get another message from a radio channel. They want to know what is happening. I wish I knew. “Speculation” is the word of the day. At my neighbour’s, over lunch, we chatted about potential scenarios and theories.

Suddenly, someone gets a message. It’s not just our block without electricity. It’s not just our street. It’s the whole of Spain, Portugal, and maybe some of France. Someone else is even talking about Germany.

How reliable is this information? I have no clue, no way of fact-checking. It’s hearsay. Word-of-mouth information is all we have.

I hang the washing out and let my rabbits out in the yard. They bounce about, only concerned about the sound of the neighbour’s washing dripping down from above. They’re in the present moment. When the internet was working, I’d read they have a memory span of four minutes. I wasn’t checking for work, so I didn’t check the veracity of these claims. Lucky things if so, perhaps. They sure as hell know how to be in the present moment.

“Will the internet and electricity come back tomorrow?” My future-oriented brain wonders. The sound of a helicopter overhead pulls me out of my preoccupation. I wonder how much money has been lost today. I go out for a walk and a man cycling past me tells me, “Vamos a morir de hambre.” (Spanish for “We’re going to die of hunger.”) Taken aback, I smile awkwardly before realising his comment is incongruent with a smile.

I see people leaving the grocery store with big bottles of water. Are they stocking up? One of my neighbours was worried about there potentially being water shortages, too. The other one was happy enough drinking beer. “You have to go with the flow,” he said cheerfully. I nervously checked my phone: still no connection.

I wonder what I would tell the media outlets if I spoke to them now. I can’t tell them the cause or what is happening in the hospitals or anything about the government response. I’m restricted to the here and now.

I decide to go back to the park.

Two men walk past me with a dog. One of them shouts, “Que no vuelva,” Spanish for “Don’t come back” or “May it not return.” I like to think he’s talking about the internet.

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Going to a concert by myself had never really crossed my mind before. Gigs were meant to be enjoyed in groups, right? Well, when an email popped into my inbox announcing that the British-Canadian king of melancholy music, Matt Maltese, would be coming to La Nau in Barcelona, I almost fell off my chair. I live in Valencia, and I knew I had to go.

Maltese might not be someone you’ve heard of — I stumbled across him around five years ago when Googling “Maltese music” in a bid to reconnect with my Mediterranean roots. It turned out Matt did not produce Maltese music, but he has accompanied me pretty much on a daily basis ever since that day. If you have heard of him, it might be because he co-wrote “Magnolias”, which was featured in Rosalía’s recent album Lux in Spanish.

Nobody I knew was a fan of his music, though. I managed to persuade a British friend who was a few months pregnant to attend the concert with me. The prospect of a final child-free weekend away was what tempted her rather than the concert itself. So, she booked flights to Barcelona to come join me. But in a strange turn of events, her outbound flight was cancelled, and the concert was postponed from December to April, which coincided with my friend’s due date. “Should I cancel?” I remember asking myself. But the new concert dates were just before International Journalism Festival (#IJF26), which I was going to attend for work anyway, so I decided, “Heck. Why the hell not? You can fly to the conference from Barcelona instead of Valencia, after all.”

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Long story short, going to the concert by myself was the best thing I could have done. It genuinely boosted my confidence in my taste in music. I had never been in a room with people singing the words to the niche music I chose to listen to, but literally everyone knew the words, just like me.

It was an intergenerational crowd, with people ranging from their late teens to early 60s. I cried during the support act Sophie May’s song “Real Life Angel” and at the end the Gen Z woman next to me in full black garb and heavy make-up sank to the floor, her head in her hands. I glanced over at her friends, but they didn’t seem too concerned. It was just an emotional catharsis of sorts. After all, in the middle of the concert, Maltese had said words to the effect of “You probably wouldn’t be here if you weren’t sensitive.”

And that’s when it dawned on me; I didn’t need to explain away my music taste or offer to skip a track because it was a “bit of a downer”. Going to that concert gave me permission to accept my music taste, feel validation in a crowd of strangers and leave a more confident woman. I was proud of being sensitive. And I knew I wasn’t the only one.

Here are a few tracks and sets you might enjoy. Have your tissues at the ready.

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And one from the support act, Sophie May:

Why should I watch?
If you want to get your creative juices flowing and come up with ideas to pitch to magazines, newspapers or to generate content of your own, then look no further. Sometimes, all it takes is one word. In this live session, I UNPACKED the keyword “rose” to help you see how many narratives can lie under the surface. Share your rose-related ideas with me in the comments. And if anyone gets commissioned to write anything rose-related, do let me know.

Keyword suggestions for upcoming sessions are welcomed. Happy pitching.

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Only when I landed in Fiumicino Airport on the afternoon of 14 April did I realise just how far Perugia was from where I was standing. I had Googled the distance from Rome city centre instead of the airport. Slowly, it dawned on me that I had at least three hours and 40 minutes of train travel left until I would reach the capital of Umbria. And the train was delayed: perfect. I sighed and bought a slab of pizza for 7 euros at the train station. I shook my head and hoped it would be worth it.

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My tickets to Perugia were 28 euros — two flimsy bits of paper that I vowed to myself I’d try not to lose so I could file them as a tax-deductible expense (oh, the joys of self-employment). I was, after all, attending the festival for professional development. I buried them in my pocket, filled with sand that had found its way under my fingernails. Since moving to Valencia in late 2021, sand has become a daily companion. There are worse things.

The passengers dispersed across the many stations of Rome, and I eventually spilled out of the train myself in Rome Tiburtina. After a hectic dash to the platform for my imminently departing train, I settle down for the next leg of my journey, thankful for the seat and the opportunity to watch strangers on a train — one of my favourite pastimes. A father and son sit opposite me, talking about school projects and the future. A man bows over his phone next to me, looking at what appears to be the news. Another guy with a laptop precariously balanced on his knees stares intently at the screen. “I wonder if he’s heading to the festival?” I think to myself. He looked earnest, almost like a ChatGPT-generated image of a journalist. But no, turns out my instinct was wrong. He got out at a place called Orte.

As we travel through the Italian countryside, it strikes me that I haven’t heard of many of the places that we pass through. Narni-Amelia. Terni. Spoleto. Foligno. I get my phone out and zoom in on Perugia on Google Maps. That’s when I notice the great body of water that lies to the west of Perugia: Lago di Trasimeno, the fourth largest lake in Italy, is just under 20km away from where I’ll be staying. I had no idea this lake even existed. It’s far less famous than Lago di Como or Lago di Garda for some reason.

I find myself wishing I had a few more days to explore, as I know the schedule will be relatively packed, what with cramming in as many talks as possible, stuffing my face with mushroom and truffle tagliatelle, a local speciality, and finishing a couple of work assignments from my Airbnb room. It crosses my mind that I still need to write pieces about an Arctic explorer, olive oil fraud, and an investment investigator. Work doesn’t stop when you are on the move, but I am blessed to have a flexible schedule.

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My bloated stomach alerts me to the fact that I haven’t been to the toilet since before catching my flight. I grab my stuff and start making my way down the carriage in search of a bit of light relief. I try opening the toilet door and am met with a rapidly blurted out “occupato”. I don’t realise it at the time, assuming that the poor bloke must be suffering a bout of severe constipation, but it turns out he’s just on the train without a ticket. Later, he is escorted off the train at Assisi. I feel for the guy. I wonder if he knows anyone in Assisi or if he is going to be stuck there overnight.

My Catholic upbringing had taught me to associate Assisi with Saint Francis, the good old itinerant friar who would forever be tied to World Animal Day in my mind. I have vague flashbacks of taking my guinea pigs to church with my mother to be blessed on 4 October when I was a wee sprog, and good ol’ Saint Francis was the main man. I wonder briefly if Saint Francis is the sort of chap who might extend help to a man who has just been kicked off the train.

But I digress. The train eventually pulls into Perugia, depositing me, my backpack and my small trolley bag on the platform. It is dark when I arrive. My phone battery is waning, and I try to memorise the route to avoid sapping it any further. Perugia is on a hill, making the entire place a cardio workout. The main station is located at the bottom of the hill, and I dart across quiet roads and am astonished when the cars actually stop for me. Wow. This is a far cry from the driving in the South of Italy. The drivers seem more patient somehow. Here, nestled in the heart of Umbria, the pace is slower and the drivers seem more docile. I breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps my paranoia comes from being half-Maltese and having seen the utter madness of the driving there on a regular basis.

My accommodation, Casa di Flor, is a room in a local woman’s home, situated on a quiet residential street, just far enough down the hill to get your calves aching on the ascent up to the more picturesque old town. In mid-April, the room costs around 32 euros a night, which is a steal for a private room with a shared bathroom.

I check in and idly browse the programme for the following day on my phone. I know I’ll have to work for most of the day tomorrow, but the events thankfully don’t start until the evening of 15 April. I’m glad I’ve arrived a day early. I’d recommend doing the same if you can, as travelling from Rome and attending festival events on the same day would be quite exhausting. The linen smelled fresh, and I settled in for the night, curious about what the coming days would hold. I’ve been to Italy several times before, but I’ve never been to Umbria or to a festival dedicated to journalism. I’m excited to cross paths with so many other people in the field and anxious about the inevitable FOMO of not being able to go to every event — thank God for the livestream. My limbs heavy against the mattress, I let myself drift off to sleep for the first time in Perugia.

To find out what I got up to, which events stood out to me and my key takeaways on where journalism is headed in 2026 and beyond, keep an eye out for my next Perugia-related post on UnpackPackUnpack.

Thanks for being here. This is a reader-supported publication, so if you enjoyed this piece and other content I’ve shared, please consider either buying me a coffee (via the button) or becoming a paid subscriber. Free subscribers and shares are also appreciated. If you made it this far, you rock. Thanks again.

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Originally featured in DUTCH The Magazine in 2024. This piece has been republished with permission from the original publisher. Thanks to the editor of the original piece, . Words and interviews by yours truly, Melita Cameron-Wood.

When you think of Dutch stereotypes, what comes to mind? Bicycles, gale-force winds? It seems only natural that the Netherlands is the birthplace of an event that involves voluntarily cycling into wind so strong that it almost knocks you flat. What the Netherlands lacks in hills, it makes up for in wind — it’s no coincidence that the country is home to over 1,200 windmills.

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The Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships (Eneco NK Tegenwindfietsen) initially came about as a promotional campaign for Dutch energy provider Eneco, which was keen to promote sustainable wind energy in a fun, inventive way beyond traditional advertising. The company Eneco HollandseWind & Zon® continues to be the event’s main sponsor to this day, but the competition itself is organized by Robrecht Stoekenbrock, Managing Director at Being There, a creative agency in Amsterdam, and a Delft-based sports marketing agency Sport Vibes.

“At our agency, we see the humor in typical Dutch stuff,” Stoekenbrock says. “Everyone in the Netherlands is traumatized by cycling to school in strong wind. Why not combine this campaign with the Dutch wind trauma and allow everyone to experience it all over again?”

Every year, participants flock to the Oosterscheldekering storm barrier, constructed to protect the land from potential flooding from the North Sea, to take part in the challenge. When it came to choosing the event location, the organizers looked for a place that was quintessentially Dutch and completely exposed to the elements.

“It was important to find somewhere that had a southwest angle because southwesterly storms are the most powerful in the Netherlands. The Oosterscheldekering storm barrier is out in the open, and there’s no protection whatsoever, so it was perfect,” Stoekenbrock explains.

To make sure that conditions are blustery enough for the event, the organizers have a weather partner who monitors the wind force and informs the organizers when the wind speed is expected to exceed seven on the Beaufort Scale. Once the correct wind speed is forecast, the event is announced three days beforehand to its fan network and on Dutch media. “We get a lot of media coverage, so the three hundred available spots for contestants are usually sold out within an hour or so,” Stoekenbrock says. The majority of the participants are Dutch, but some Belgian cycling enthusiasts also make the trip to compete in the event.

As if the championships weren’t hard enough already, all contestants have to use a basic Popal bike supplied by the event organizers to level the playing field. “Imagine a grandmother’s bicycle (omafiets),” Stoekenbrock says. “It’s a typical old-fashioned Dutch bicycle with kick-back brakes. This kind of bike makes you lean backwards instead of forwards, as you typically would on a racing bike.” Gears, ultralight carbon frames and drop handlebars are strictly forbidden. Contestants have to rely on their willpower and brute force to reach the finish line.

The competition is open to anyone brave enough to consider participating, and it has attracted people from all walks of life, from professional rowers and cyclists, to local farmers and housewives. Everyone competes in the same category, unlike many other sporting events that separate participants according to ability or age group.

“The moment I heard about the Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships, I knew I wanted to participate. It is such a unique idea,” says Bart Brentjens, the record holder for the fastest completion of the five-mile route (seventeen minutes and fifty-one seconds in 2013) since the event began that same year. The Olympic gold medallist (1996 Summer Olympics, mountain biking) isn’t the only one who enjoys the challenge of cycling into gale-force winds, though. “We once had a former strongman participating in the event and he came last,” Stoekenbrock tells me, chuckling. “We also have some participants in their late seventies. It’s a real mixture of silly souls.” Jan de Jager, a local farmer from Zeeland, has participated in every single event, and has even come close to becoming number one. “I have a lot of respect for Farmer Jan because he’s there every time, giving it his all,” Stoekenbrock remarks.

While health and safety remain front of mind for the organizers, there have never been any major accidents because it is very difficult for contestants to reach top speeds in gale-force winds in the first place. “The wind blows you to almost a complete standstill, so the worst-case scenario is that you stop moving and fall off your bike,” Stoekenbrock comments. “Nobody has ended up in the sea so far.”

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It isn’t easy to prepare for this event, but the fact that most people are used to cycling in windy conditions in the Netherlands definitely helps. “I suppose you could prepare by forcing yourself to do annoying things,” Stoekenbrock adds. “You need to have the mental strength to battle the wind for at least forty-five minutes. I think if you’re a true cyclist with big thighs and calves, that really helps. But we just advise people to have happy thoughts and hold on.”

In 2020, the event had to be canceled midway through on account of the wind being too strong. “As an organization, we felt that it was too unsafe. I had to get into a bus of participants who had just arrived at the start from the registration point and tell everyone that we had canceled the race for safety reasons,” Stoekenbrock says. “They booed me off the bus and called me a ‘sissy.’ They weren’t throwing tomatoes and eggs, but there was that kind of atmosphere.”

In 2023, the event also had to be called off due to Storm Ciarán, as the forecast signalled that wind speeds would be in excess of sixty-two miles per hour. Even the hardiest of cyclists might have had issues with those conditions — there is such a thing as too much wind, it seems.

In contrast to other sporting events with a large number of spectators, the Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships do not tend to attract crowds of onlookers. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the weather that is a prerequisite for the event is not exactly ideal for standing outside in the elements, so many opt to watch the competition from the comfort of their homes instead. Secondly, the chosen location in the province of Zeeland is quite a journey for people living in the Netherlands’s major cities. This means that participation in the event can be a lonesome affair. Stoekenbrock, who enjoys participating in the event himself as well as organizing it, admits that the course can be emotionally challenging at times: “You do it for yourself with the other 299 participants. There’s nobody standing there cheering you on. It’s a time trial, so you are really lonely, cycling on this silly bike against the wind while nobody’s watching. I think you really need to experience it yourself to understand the agony that comes with it.”

The Barkley Marathons in the U.S., a gruelling ultramarathon trail race that takes place annually in Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County, Tennessee, have been a source of inspiration to the organizers, who admire the way in which the U.S. event combines fun elements (like humorous application letters, followed by “letters of condolences” for successful applicants) with a tough sporting event. Seeing a parallel between the silly factor of both events, the organizers of the Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships endeavor to keep things light-hearted both during and after the event.

But despite the self-proclaimed “silly” nature of the event, the contest is rooted in the Dutch tradition of battling against the elements for survival. And as cyclists fight their way to the end of the course along the seemingly never-ending Oosterscheldekering storm barrier, it seems fitting that they cycle past a concrete block that bears the inscription: Hier gaan over het tij, de maan, de wind en wij (Here the tide is ruled by the wind, the moon and us). Here, strength of mind meets the force of nature in a celebration of Dutch willingness to persist against all odds in the face of the elements.

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This article was originally published by Times of Malta in their Sunday Circle magazine. It has been republished here with their permission.

When the then-Ambassador of Malta to Spain, Daniel Azzopardi, completed the Camino Portugués by sailing boat and on foot in 2021, he was shocked to discover that there was no official route connecting Malta to Santiago de Compostela.

“We know about the classic routes like the Camino Francés, the Camino Portugués and the Camino Primitivo, but there are actually lots of other routes, with one even starting all the way over in Istanbul,” Azzopardi says. “But Malta didn’t feature on the map of routes in my pilgrim passport, and I wanted to do something about this.”

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Inspired by his own camino, Azzopardi spoke to the Honorary Consul of Malta in Vigo, Gabriel Alberto Baltar Giraud, who then organized a meeting with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the then President of the Regional Government of Galicia and the leader of the Spanish Partido Popular. In the hope of bolstering tourism and bilateral relations, Azzopardi spoke to Núñez Feijóo about his plans to create an official Camino Maltés with components both on land and at sea.

The proposition was met with great enthusiasm by Núñez Feijóo. “We hashed out the process through correspondence,” Azzopardi comments. “One of the key points was our historical link of over 500 years with Spain because to get a camino, you need to prove that there has historically been some sort of pilgrim movement between the two places.”

Malta was ruled by the Crown of Aragon between 1282 and 1530, when King Carlos I of Spain, also known as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, handed the islands over to the Knights of Malta. While Spain maintained official suzerainty at this time, King Carlos saw the islands as the ideal base from which to defend Christendom against the Turks and Islam. This strong historical bond between the two nations, along with evidence of renewed interest in pilgrimages across Europe following the Reconquista and the unification of Spain under the crown of Castille, filled Azzopardi with hope.

This hope turned into reality when he called James Portelli, the President of XirCammini, a voluntary organisation dedicated to heritage faith walks in Malta and the rest of Europe. Coincidentally, when Portelli picked up the phone, he was actually in the middle of completing the Camino Primitivo, leading a group from Oviedo to Santiago de Compostela for the second time. He stopped in his tracks.

Portelli had been working on making the Camino Maltés an official route since 2017. Four years later, in August 2022, Azzopardi’s call came as a welcome surprise. “The missing link for us was getting approval from official authorities in Spain,” Portelli remarked. He was overjoyed to hear that Azzopardi was building the bridge with the Galician authorities to make this happen. Azzopardi was equally thrilled when Portelli told him that he had struck gold when searching for the all-important documentation that proved there had been pilgrim movement between Malta and Santiago de Compostela.

In the past, before walking to Santiago de Compostela, pilgrims from every kingdom, princedom, dukedom and bishopric state used to obtain a so-called Credencial, a certificate of safe passage, from their respective government authority.

“We always believed that Malta, being a Catholic state, in addition to its strong connections with the Knights of St. John, would have had pilgrims going from Malta to Santiago de Compostela,” Portelli explains. A Credencial issued by Grandmaster Alof de Wignacourt to Don Juan Benegas de Cordoba in the early 17th century for his passage from Rabat, Malta, to sanctuaries in Europe, including ‘San Giacomo in Galitia’ is testament to Malta’s historical connection to Santiago de Compostela.

Having found the missing piece of the puzzle and gained the support of the project’s stakeholders (Heritage Malta, The Ministry for Foreign, European Affairs and Trade, The Malta Tourism Authority and XirCammini), Azzopardi was feeling confident, but the exact route of the Camino Maltés still needed to be decided upon.

Initially, Heritage Malta and Azzopardi were keen to start the route in Birgu, as it was the de facto capital of the knights before Valletta was founded. However, based on Don Juan Benegas de Cordoba’s Credencial, it was decided that the route should start from St. Paul’s Grotto in Rabat instead. The route would then traverse Malta’s ancient villages before reaching Fort St. Angelo. The “Universal Peace Walk 1543AD”, which was relaunched by XirCammini in 2023 on the 480th anniversary of the route, was also incorporated into the Maltese portion of the Camino Maltés. The 35-kilometre Maltese section of the Camino Maltés also passes by many Heritage Malta sites, such as the Inquisitor’s Palace, the Maritime Museum and Fort St. Angelo, where pilgrims can have their pilgrim passports stamped before their onward journey.

In early December 2022, the route was officially added to the map owned by the Instituto Nacional Geográfico (IGN). The approximately 3,600-kilometre route from Malta to Santiago de Compostela includes stages in Sicily, Sardinia and Spain.

“It is estimated that should one complete the entire pilgrimage, it would take an average person circa 4 to 5 months to do this route,” explains Mr Russell Muscat, Heritage Malta International Relations Manager. “Nevertheless, people should not be alarmed or disheartened as there are various ways of doing any Camino de Santiago, including the Camino Maltés, such as doing it in instalments over a number of months or years, or doing the Maltese segment and then continuing with the final segment. In fact, ‘camino rules’ state that you will obtain a ‘compostela’ (certificate of completion) as long as you walk the last 100km.”

All official camino routes can be completed on foot, on horseback, by bicycle, by sailing boat or on a wheelchair, or a mixture of these options. The Camino Maltés was carefully planned out to include commercial ferry routes to provide pilgrims with this possibility.

For Heritage Malta, this venture provides an opportunity to marry “intangible heritage”, such as the pilgrimage route itself, and “tangible heritage” such as the historical structures on the Maltese islands. The visibility of this “intangible heritage” will soon be further enhanced, as the Regional Government of Galicia has gifted the Government of Malta a Hito, a classic granite waymark such as the ones that can be found in northern Spain. This waymark will increase the public’s awareness of the camino and hopefully also encourage many future pilgrims to set off for Santiago!

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This article was originally featured in Times of Malta’s Sunday Circle magazine. It has been republished here with permission from the newspaper.

When Morgan Chetcuti joined the Armed Forces of Malta, he had no idea that he would become a professional stunt coordinator in the future. “My team was deployed with Frontex. We were working on different warships around the Mediterranean,” Morgan recalls. “I did that for 13 years. In the noughties, I began working as a special skills extra in films because they needed people who knew how to handle firearms.”

Originally, Morgan would just take a few days of leave to be able to participate in the shoots, but his big break came with Captain Phillips (2013). “They needed somebody of my colouring to be an actor’s stunt double, drive the boat, go alongside the ship and then climb up the side of it. Up until then, I only used to work locally, but the director and the stunt coordinator asked me if I’d be available to go and work with them in the U.S., the U.K. and Morocco.”

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The more film work he did, the greater the parallels he noticed between film production and the military. “It was a very easy transition from the armed forces to stunt work because in the armed forces, you have a chain of command,” Morgan comments. “In film, you’ve also got different departments with various heads of department. As a stunt performer, I knew that I had to go to my superior rather than addressing the director.” Morgan’s time in the armed forces also equipped him with a wide array of skills from driving bulletproof vehicles to learning precision driving techniques. “All of this stuff came in handy when I started doing stunt driving in film because instead of an armoured vehicle, you have a camera attached to the car, so you still have a heavier load,” Morgan says.

In the military, Morgan was a corporal, so he was used to coordinating a group of people and conducting risk assessments. Working as a stunt coordinator involves a similar skillset. The difference was that while stunts can be dangerous, the risk was often not as extreme. “If there’s someone smuggling drugs from North Africa to Sicily, they don’t want to get caught. They’re desperate, so they’re going to use whatever means necessary, including shooting at you. In film, it’s blanks or rubber guns. Nobody is throwing real boat hooks at you.”

Some stunts can be extremely dangerous though, particularly as storylines can keep performers from wearing the safety gear that they would usually wear. “The most dangerous stunt I have coordinated and performed was the jet ski crash in Shark Bait (2022). It took a lot of planning. We were crashing vehicles into each other in a water tank with no helmets and no life jackets. In the risk assessment, we consider the correlation between severity and likelihood. The potential severity of that stunt could have been fatal.”

After the jet ski crash, the stunt performers needed to be dragged through the water for around 60 metres as if they were being pulled along by a shark. One of the challenges was ensuring that it looked like it was the actors who were being dragged along, rather than their stunt doubles. This was achieved by directing the rear end of a diver propulsion vehicle (DPV) towards the actors on a platform in the water tank. Close-up shots of the actors’ faces made it look like the actors were being dragged through the water.

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When working as a stunt performer, Morgan would sometimes be directed to make the stunts look less slick. “In Captain Phillips, they told me to bash the ship when I pulled the boat up alongside it. If you do something four times a week, then you aren’t going to find it that challenging, but these guys are supposed to be pirates, not military professionals.”

Having left the military and taken the decision to focus fully on stunt work, Morgan now runs Phantom Stunts, a stunt training facility in Ħal-Luqa, where he has a team of over 30 stunt performers, ranging from free divers to gymnasts and horse riders. The Jurassic World Dominion (2022) shoot, which took place during the pandemic in Malta, presented a big opportunity for Morgan’s team, many of whom were involved in the shoot.

In his role as a stunt coordinator, Morgan highlights the areas in the script where he thinks stunt doubles might be necessary. “A lot of the time, the director wants the actor to do everything so you can see their face,” Morgan says, “but the producers will know whether the actor has a dodgy back or an ear problem that could prevent them from doing something.” Recent photos of the actors, along with their measurements, help Morgan to find suitable stunt doubles, but depending on the scene, some discrepancies can be concealed. “I’m five foot eight, but I doubled a guy who was six foot four in 13 hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. There was an explosion, the camera was low, and you just see a body flying through the air. Then you see the actor on the floor shouting and screaming in pain. We got away with it in that context.”

More recently, Morgan worked on The Dive (2023), which is newly-released. While the underwater stunts, supervised by Second Unit director Abigail Borg, took place in Germany, the above-ground stunts took place in Malta. “There’s a scene where there’s a goat crossing the road and the stunt double slides the car off the road,” Morgan explains. “We flipped the car with a forklift, removed all the glass and replaced it with rubber glass, so the actress didn’t have any sharp objects around her.” The production decided to go for this option because it was cheaper than getting a stunt performer to flip the car, as this would have required a roll cage, a reinforced vehicle and another car for the actor to be filmed in.

Another challenge is ensuring that stunts do not result in environmental damage. During The Dive shoot, a car had to be lowered to the bottom of Miġra l-Ferħa cliff. “If you flip a car for real, you’re going to have oil spillages and radiator fluid,” Morgan says, “Part of the expense was removing all fluids. Then you have to place the car down there without breaking or scratching any of the rocks.” During the Jurassic World Dominion shoot, a land bridge was suspended on a scaffold platform to avoid endangering the habitat or damaging the cobwebs of a protected spider species near The Red Tower in Mellieħa.

Morgan’s unique career path has taken him from the high seas to water tanks, car crashes and jet ski collisions. The life of a stunt double is not an easy one, but an adrenaline-packed existence that involves measured risks and the mastery of illusion — a life that is anything but humdrum.

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If you enjoyed this piece, and you are interested in collaboration, contact me on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can find out more about my work on my website.

There was no hand that drove the needle,
for it was driven by a thread.

Like a needle binding cloth,
the train drives forcefully
through the land.

The earth was made
of jagged corduroy.
It had already bent
many a spike,
turned metal blunt
and found sources
for red streams
on fingers that had
forgotten their thimbles.
If only those nails
had duly migrated!

This time,
the train
drives
relentlessly,
inflamed
and seething,
with renewed metallic gusto.

It shall surf the land
on straight, determined tracks
that mock scattered fields,
disintegrating tarmac
and disparate clouds,
which are so easily
derailed, for they
dither without destination.

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NOTES: Human invention builds momentum and becomes a force that is an entity of its own. Industrial progress may be mechanically sound, but it can also injure us in the process. It can cause us to forget the joy of uncontrolled being and natural alignment.

The train is a metaphor for human invention that is no longer under human control. Sometimes we think we know where an invention will take us, but the invention takes us elsewhere. So, the gulf between nature and machinery grows wider. And ordered being becomes disdainful of the beauty of disarray.

This article was originally published by Times of Malta in Pink magazine. This version has been lightly edited to ensure accuracy in 2026.

“The scuba diver dives to look around, the freediver dives to look inside,” the freediving world champion Umberto Pelizzari once said. This quote rings true for Dawid Tran Van, an internationally competing freediver and a Polish national record holder residing in Gozo, Malta.

Likening the experience of freediving to meditation, Tran Van finds that the discipline helps him to clear his mind and feel more at peace. “I love it because it’s all about control and being calm. If you have any tension in your body, it’s harder to hold your breath and feel comfortable underwater,” Tran Van explains. “If I’m having a bad day and I go for a dive, then I always feel better after getting out of the water. It’s like medicine.”

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When Tran Van moved to Gozo in February 2020, he originally planned to stay for just six months before returning to Poland. Within the framework of an Erasmus+ volunteering scheme, he had received an opportunity to work as a lifeguard for the Emergency Response and Rescue Corps. He saw this as a chance to experience island life, but he did not foresee himself falling in love with Gozo and deciding to stay there.

The more time Tran Van spent in the water, however, the more intrigued he became by the pull of the deep blue. “When I first arrived, I thought I could swim, but I did a few strokes, and I would get really tired after a few metres. Lifeguarding helped me to improve my swimming, and I started snorkelling,” Tran Van recalls. “My first freedive was quite painful because I didn’t know that you had to equalize the pressure in your ears, so I hated it. I never thought I would come to like freediving as much as I do now.”

Equalizing involves balancing the air pressure in the air-holding spaces in your skull and the middle ear to make freediving a pleasant, pain-free experience. There are several ways of doing this, but the simplest technique involves swallowing saliva or doing the Valsalva manoeuvre (pinching your nose and blowing through it at the same time to force air into your Eustachian tubes). However, this technique is not the best for freediving at depth, as it is hard to bring the air up from your lungs.

The Frenzel manoeuvre, on the other hand, can be used for deeper dives. This method involves using the tongue to move the air towards the soft palate. For freedivers who want to reach greater depths, the mouthfill equalization, a more advanced version of the Frenzel method, can be used. This entails filling your oral cavity with air, closing the glottis and opening the soft palate. This allows air to be stored and redistributed after the lungs have compressed. As this combination of movements never occurs naturally in the body, it is often the hardest technique to master.

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After getting the hang of the various equalization techniques and completing a course in freediving using lines and lanyards with Innerdive, Tran Van began to enjoy the process a lot more. With the support of experienced freedivers such as the owner of Deep Med Fabrice Bonello Du Puis and Innerdive founder and world champion Jesper Stechmann, Tran Van started freediving on a daily basis.

“I adjusted my routine to be able to dive,” Tran Van says. “I start work at the gym at 5:30am so I can go diving around 10 am because most people tend to go at this time. Then I go back to the gym and continue working.”

Gozo is a popular location among the freediving community because there are a number of spots for beginners and advanced divers to explore. “There’s so much variety, but my favourite location is the Coral Gardens in Dwejra,” Tran Van shares. “That place is perfect for all levels — beginners can snorkel and go down a bit further if they want to, but there are also holes and rock formations that you can go through. Freedivers are a bit like cats. Cats like to go into boxes and small spaces, and if a freediver sees a hole underwater, they’ll want to go through it.”

When freediving, it’s important to never go unaccompanied or with inexperienced divers for safety reasons. Tran Van is highly appreciative of the extensive freediving community in Gozo. In fact, it was one of his fellow divers who encouraged him to compete in the AIDA Croatia Adriatic Depth Trophy 2023, which was held in the waters of Krk island.

“The Adriatic is colder than Gozitan waters, so that was a challenge. I usually warm up in the water before I begin the dive, but I just sat on the boat beforehand. I didn’t want to freeze because that affects my relaxation,” Tran Van explains. This technique paid off, as his participation in the competition led to him becoming the Polish CWTB (constant weight with fins/bifins) national record holder.

This achievement meant that he qualified for the CMAS World Championship in Roatan, Honduras. Since then, he has gone on to compete in the 33rd AIDA Freediving World Championship, in Corsica in 2024, and the AIDA Siquijor Depth Mini-Competition.

Today, Tran Van continues to compete internationally and is still based in Gozo. Despite representing Poland, Tran Van’s freediving journey began in Gozo, and he even refers to Gozitan waters as his “home waters”, so it’s fair to say he’ll also be representing the Maltese Islands in spirit, if not in name.

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Abandoned cigarette butts
let their entrails seep into
cemented grooves between
paving slabs.

Discarded odds and ends
flirt with the logical equation
of street corners, lamp posts
and zebra crossings.

All the while, the wind cackles
as it hurls yet another fistful
of crumpled leaves, tickets
and snot rags onto the street.

But the city was made to fit
a grid, so passers-by
know where they’re going,
know where they’ve been,
and are quite agreed that
disarray is simply obscene.

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NOTES:
When you look at what usually goes unnoticed, the mundane can seem marvellous, poetic and thought-provoking. I like paying attention to things that seem irrelevant, weird or banal. It makes my walks more interesting and gives me fertile ground for reflection. What do you like paying attention to when you go out for a walk?

Originally published by Times of Malta’s Sunday Circle magazine in 2021. Republished with the permission of the publication. Light edits have been applied to ensure accuracy in 2026.

Standing before Kevin Attard’s townhouse in the Maltese town of Gżira, I’m unsure what awaits me inside. I have never met a filigree artisan before — let alone one whose work ranges from skulls to dominatrix collars.

Kevin Attard, who has been working as a filigree artisan since the age of 15, fashions his filigree masterpieces on the top floor of his house in a simple whitewashed workshop. Other than a workbench, an open-flame torch, a small cabinet and a couple of chairs, the room is relatively bare, making it easy for Kevin’s filigree sculptures to steal the show. A towering filigree serpent rises up to greet us as we enter the space, accompanied by a comparatively docile frog, and a cantankerous bull that looks like it is about to run headlong out of the glass box that has been placed over it.

Filigree is an ancient craft involving intricate metalwork and small metal beads. Filigree artisans like Kevin use thin silver or gold wire to create ornate designs that are reminiscent of metallic lace. The earliest surviving examples of this craft were found in Mesopotamia and date back to 3000 BC.

Filigree has withstood the test of time. When walking around the Maltese capital of Valletta, row upon row of filigree creations twinkle enticingly from the city’s numerous jewellery shop windows. The items on sale in these shops tend to be targeted towards tourists and are far more traditional in style than many of Kevin’s creations.

“Most of my colleagues do Maltese crosses, butterflies and flowers. Filigree often involves beautiful, symmetrical designs,” Kevin explains. While some people might be inclined to call these sorts of designs “Maltese filigree”, Kevin considers this definition to be problematic. “In my opinion, Maltese filigree is a myth. It doesn’t exist,” he says, suddenly serious. “For me, there is no Maltese filigree, or Portuguese filigree, or Japanese filigree. There is just filigree and the process is always the same.” Four key steps are repeated with every design: the artisan builds a skeleton out of silver wire, fills that skeleton up with his or her design, solders it, and cleans the final product. “The only difference between pieces is the individual behind them.”

Born to make filigree flex

From the beginning of his career, Kevin knew he wanted to do something different. At the age of 13, he began playing around with silver in his father’s jewellery repair shop. When he turned 15, his father introduced him to a friend of his who worked as a filigree artisan.

“I spent two weeks with my father’s friend, and then I started doing filigree myself,” he recalls. “I started doing these abstract pieces back then, and to be honest, they didn’t sell well. But you know, I was young and my parents were supporting me, so I could play around a bit. The other guys told me what I was doing wasn’t any good, but I’m a very hard-headed person, and I continued.”

After about two years of experimentation in his mid-teens, Kevin resolved to make sure that at least fifty per cent of his creations would sell. That meant compromising, and creating traditional pieces that customers would definitely buy. He dedicated the rest of his time to more abstract designs.

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Persistence was the key to Kevin’s success, as his tendency to go against the grain wasn’t always appreciated by locals. “In 2000, I had my first exhibition of twenty filigree sculptures in Gozo. It was a mix of abstract and figurative sculptures. I managed to sell two of the twenty sculptures, and then I melted down the rest because I couldn’t afford to waste the silver.” This didn’t deter him, however. He persevered. “I like challenges,” he explains. “If someone tells me that I cannot do something, then that triggers me immediately. I am a bit of an extreme guy, but I am trying to reach new circles of people with my filigree — people who would never usually consider buying filigree.”

Reviving an ancient craft

Kevin is also keen to pass his knowledge onto future generations of filigree artisans through courses. “Teaching is rewarding. It is great for your ego. You pass on your knowledge. Seeing someone else doing well — and hopefully better than you — is really nice,” Kevin says enthusiastically. “I like to invest more time in younger people. I had a young Japanese woman come along to my course, and I recently helped her set up her own workshop at home. That was a great feeling because I know she is going to continue.”

The courses that Kevin runs through Malta Society of Arts and in his Valletta workshop lay the foundations to allow students to work independently on their own projects afterwards. “The masters say you need two years to become a filigree master. That is bullshit,” he exclaims. “You just need some lessons with a good teacher, and then of course, you have to go on with your training.”

For Kevin, almost anything can be made into filigree — even the unexpected. When Maltese artist Lisa Falzon started coming to filigree lessons at Kevin’s workshop in Gżira, they realised that they had a lot in common and decided to collaborate. Both were frustrated by the Maltese art scene, as they found it to be too tame and rigid. “Kevin and I are both trolls,” Lisa says, smiling. “One day, we were talking about how passé the subject of decontextualised genitalia in art is — they’ve been drawing penises on Pompeii’s walls since before the volcano erupted, and then there’s Manet’s vulva-focused The Origin of the World. None of this is new, yet these kinds of images are still presented as somehow taboo on this island. In between rolling our eyes, I laughingly suggested that we should put on a filigree exhibition focused entirely on assholes.”

Pushing filigree’s boundaries

This idea led to the creation of pieces that both Lisa and Kevin were sure that the public had never seen before. Their goal was to take a body part that people are not used to seeing up close in artwork and to display it in an abstract manner. Finding an exhibition space was no mean feat, however. The exhibition, which they wanted to call toqob — “holes” in Maltese — was turned down by two potential venues before the pair approached the owners of Café Society in Valletta. The café owners found the project amusing and agreed to organise an exhibition of the pieces in their gallery space.

“It goes to show how tame people still are on this island,” Lisa comments. “There is nothing pornographic in our work. The artworks themselves could have been viewed by many people and not even recognised for what they are. People here take themselves seriously. That’s the joke.”

Kevin doesn’t plan on letting others’ opinions stop him, and he is constantly coming up with new and interesting ways to delve further into the possibilities that filigree can offer. “I started this project called Young Masters. Basically, I ask children between five and eight to sketch something, and then I repeat the design in filigree. Parents send me their children’s drawings, and I turn it into filigree. It’s incredible what children do.” Kevin takes a framed piece of filigree off the top of his cabinet and shows me the filigree version of a child’s drawing of an octopus in a house. “I would never have come up with this. That is the interesting part. When it comes to this situation, this is one of the rare situations where I submit totally to deliver an accurate depiction of the child’s design.”

Kevin places the piece back on top of his cabinet, and the late afternoon sun shines through the window, illuminating the majestic serpent on the cabinet behind us. Resplendent, it glints in the light, and for a split second, it seems to come to life. Kevin notices the direction of my gaze, and smiles. “It won’t bite, but I do try to make my work feel almost alive. I direct my energy onto my workbench.” And in that moment, the brightness of the sun bouncing off the whitewashed walls, the magnificent sculptures truly do seem to embody Kevin’s relentless energy, filling the space with their presence.

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Two souls cross in the stairwell.
One looks right, the otheR left.
They have met before,
mAny times, in many places.

Memories, drained into
the dishwater of dreams,
float into the ether, unsung,
unCelebrated, undulating
in the genesis of what
they’ll call a wavElength.

The great chasm of rising
and falling and rising again
echoes Their sullen steps.
THey trudge into tomorrow,
tempted by truancy,
tamed by the tError of tumuLt.

Risen from the hearse,
the pregnant dawn
Lets out her birthing cry.
Old souls rIse with the mist
and leap from the shadows
cast by the Nascent rays.

They remember who they were.
They know whEre they’re going.
They know who they know.

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NOTEs:
I wrote this poem at a moment when I was trying to understand an inexplicable connection, a feeling of knowingness I had with a person I had met. I knew this person would not be in my life forever, that we were passing through each other’s lives rather than staying for the long haul, but I knew that the level of understanding felt uncanny, almost ancestrally bound.

I chose the stairwell motif to portray the notion of transit, and the message “TRACE THE LINE” came from the idea of recognising the interconnectedness and synchronicity of human experience. Sometimes, we try to find connection, meaning, and carve control out of chaos. But often, the line has already been pre-determined, and we can only trace the path in retrospect.

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