Valletta Liverpool – Between Monumental and Minor Heritage is a transnational research project that extends an ongoing series of comparative heritage studies initiated with Valletta Accra. Developed by the APFHF in collaboration with Ann Dingli and Liverpool John Moores University, the project positions Valletta and Liverpool as parallel case study subjects for interrogating different intensities of contemporary heritage regeneration practice.
 

The research focuses on the distinction and perceived imbalance between monumental and minor heritage: how landmark buildings are conserved, curated, and commodified, while every day, industrial, and infrastructural sites are often overlooked. This question is explored within the shared context of port cities shaped by trade, industry, and large-scale cultural regeneration, each having held the title of European Capital of Culture; Liverpool in 2008, Valletta in 2018. Through on-site workshops in both cities, the project will undertake close comparative readings of selected urban areas and buildings, with particular attention paid to former industrial sites such as power stations, docks, and infrastructural remnants. These spaces will become lenses through which to examine the pressures of tourism, accelerated regeneration, and the risk of heritage commodification.

The project will unfold through a combination of fieldwork, academic collaboration and public dialogue. A central output will be a live,
hybrid forum, part lecture, part panel discussion, designed to open the research to wider civic and international audiences. Like Valletta Accra before it, Valletta Liverpool positions contrast as a methodological tool, advancing a critical, transferable framework for heritage practice that values the everyday alongside the monumental, advocating for more inclusive, context-sensitive approaches to urban regeneration.