Establishing a creative identity: Rebranding a creative space

•This article makes sense of cultural participation at the National Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta.•It provides an epistemological understanding of the meanings and feelings of audiences in their cultural participation.•Results presented in this article were used as guiding frame in the process of rebranding this Centre for Creativity.•The framework set out to understand cultural participation can be applied to other contexts and locations.

Strategies on audience development have become central to cultural debates in Malta. Such interest stems partly from Malta's current low rate of participation in cultural events. While there has been a rising interest in analysing cultural consumption and audiences quantitatively, the modes of agency of cultural participants, who reflexively make sense of events differently, have received inadequate attention. This article tackles this gap by presenting empirical results of a recent qualitative study on audiences' reflexivity for the National Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta. The contribution of this article lies in the fact that it provides an epistemological understanding of the meanings and feelings of audiences for engagement, or lack of it, in cultural participation at the National Centre for Creativity in Malta. Results presented in this article were used as guiding frame in the process of rebranding this national Centre as a creative space in the capital city of Malta.