30 January 2026
ArtHive at Dom Mauro Inguanez, Senglea Primary
The first ArtReach workshop for primary school students
We sat down with Anna Napier, Head of School for St Margaret College, Dom Mauro Inguanez Senglea Primary, to gather feedback from our first term implementing our ArtReach classes to the students
29 November 2025
Stitching Hope Across a Fractured Landscape
ArtHive’s first exhibition
Two artists who form part of the newly set-up ArtHive Co-operative Ltd have come together and are putting on a joint exhibition of their work. This collaboration between textile artist Judie Farrugia and photographer John Grech presents us with a small but forceful collection of 10 works on the theme of the environment.
Judie works with textiles to produce scenes that at first glance may seem playful, but once the viewer gets close to the work, they will be hit by the realisation that the work is involved, intricate and painstaking, and may find that maybe at times the playfulness is a mere patina. There is poignancy in this: Farrugia puts the viewer in the shoes of a child who is trying to decipher the goings on in the big world around them as a harsh reality starts to reconstitute the picture before their very eyes. John’s photography is quite the counterpoint to Judie’s pieces.
Whereas Judie’s work appears to be hopeful, notwithstanding the grim realities she may compel us to look at – one gets the sense that the artist cannot help this sentiment of hope, no matter what life throws at her – the photographic images are stark and don’t shy away from despair. But it is interesting how while Judie creates beauty, John tries (and succeeds) to make beauty out of the ugliness, despair and destruction, itself an act of desperation.
In this limited exhibition, the two strands of work string together a gamut of emotions which one may choose to see as Yin and Yang or as a spectrum. Be that as it may, the strands converge in two works which are a direct collaboration between the two artists, in which Farrugia’s work is directly superimposed on two of Grech’s photographs, thus creating a nexus where the two visions collide and tessellate into a vision for the future.
27 November 2025
Another successful Mixed Media workshop session designed by Andrew Inguanez, delivered by Rebecca Zammit. This week’s focus was colour theory by looking at humankind’s interaction with pigments and raw materials found naturally within the earth and environment around us.
ArtReach workshops are designed with the aim of instilling in the children an appreciation of the value and beauty of the arts.
The ArtReach programme is proudly supported by the Kottonera Foundation as part of their ongoing commitment to strengthen education, creativity, and youth empowerment across the Cottonera region.
19 November 2025
ArtHive Co-operative Ltd, a newly-established co-operative, is launching ArtReach, a programme of workshops at Senglea Primary School. Our first workshop is being funded by the Kottonera Foundation. ArtHive aims to bring together artists from diverse disciplines to collaborate on innovative, socially conscious projects that integrate art, technology and cultural engagement. ArtHive aims to make art an integral part of everyday life. Committed to inclusivity and sustainability, our aim is to foster creative opportunities for emerging generations with a new-found appreciation of the arts.
To this end, ArtHive Co-operative Ltd is launching ArtReach, a programme which aims to promote art through a series of workshops intended to reach out to the youngest in the community, namely primary school children. The first one of these starts this November at Senglea Primary School. In these workshops, pupils around the age of 9 will have the opportunity to experience what it is like to be the creator, one of the three elements in the artist-art-audience triad.
This is the first of a number of workshops created by professional artists. This first one, a ten-session course in Mixed Media, is designed by Andrew Inguanez, himself an art teacher and practitioner, who is one of a number of artists who have teamed up with ArtHive on this project. These workshops are designed with the aim of instilling in the children an appreciation of the value and beauty of the arts and the understanding that to live life without this appreciation is to miss out on life itself.
Other workshops in different art forms are already on the drawing board, and ArtHive looks forward to rolling them out in stages in other localities in Malta and Gozo. ArtHive would like to thank the Kottonera Foundation who were immediately very forthcoming with their support and generously stepped in to help us set this train in motion.
The Kottonera Foundation is proud to support the ArtReach programme as part of their ongoing commitment to strengthen education, creativity, and youth empowerment across the Cottonera region. Through this initiative, the Kottonera Foundation aims to provide students with access to high-quality artistic experiences that encourage self-expression, confidence, and new ways of learning. By supporting ArtHive’s innovative approach, the Kottonera Foundation continues working towards a vibrant, creative, and opportunity-rich future for all children in Cottonera.
