Our Global Spring: ArtsEtc Editor Linda M. Deane (right) and her children, Andy and Izora, march in Bridgetown June 13, 2020, for what matters.  Since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers May 25, 2020, many worldwide have been protesting against social and economic injustice.  Photo Copyright © 2020 by Sharon Hurley Hall.

THERE ISN'T MUCH that lures my son from his FIFA games and Call of Duty. Mealtimes, a real-life game of football, or training (when he went to training.) That’s pretty much it. Until May 25.

Nick Whittle (r) in conversation with National Cultural Foundation CEO Carol Roberts-Reifer and Gustavo Pandiani, the Ambassador of the Argentine Republic to Barbados.  Photograph Copyright © 2019 by the NCF.

A Reaction to Nick Whittle’s Exhibition Other Lives

WITHOUT EXPENDING a huge amount of imagination, I find myself cast into the middle of a gigantic ocean. On a ship or, maybe, beneath it, at one with the churning waves.

Linda M. Deane receiving her journalism diploma from The Honourable Billie Miller at the graduation ceremony held at the Hilton Hotel, June 1982.  At the podium, partly hidden, is Harold Hoyte.  Photo Copyright © 1982 by the Nation.

WHO was it said: “You can change your mind, but you can’t change your fate?”

(or 7 days in the life of a creative whose well of dreams is deeper than her pocket)

SHORTLY AFTER Minister John King’s open invitation to the artists' community of Barbados to bombard him with ideas, project proposals, wish lists, I volunteered to respond on ArtsEtc’s behalf.  Of course, I’ve procrastinated. No idea where to begin. But last week after more than seven near-consecutive days of creative adventure, I am beginning to sense what the notes for the draft of that letter might look like….

Welcome to Deane’s List. Mostly about the literary arts in and outside Barbados, but also about other art forms and issues shaping culture and community. Mostly informal and about what’s noteworthy and toast-worthy. But not above or beyond a gripe or a swipe. A randomized threading of the personal with the universal. A web, if you will, in the shape of a list. Spun as an occasional blog for ArtsEtc by one of its editors, a sometime-ish writer whose name is Deane.

Adrian "Boo" Husbands: a Barbadian cultural force.  Photo Copyright © 2017.

PICTURE IT. Black Rock Cultural Centre in the 1980s. Richard Stoute’s Teen Talent Contest. The early rounds. Upstairs, on a darkened balcony overlooking the packed, noise- and music-filled hall, a rookie reporter takes a breather. Out of the shadows, a figure coolly emerges.

“You’s Linda Deane from the Nation, right?”