Highlights from ArtsEtc's 4 Love of Barbados event at Spice of Life, November 2024.
 

Have you ever had an idea that started as a small thing, a seed, barely an imagining and then watched it as it grew legs, wings—a mind, even, of its own?

That’s what ArtsEtc has experienced over the last few months with its storytelling and publishing project 4 Love of Barbados.

1

2001 • I leave the newspaper I was working at with a baby in my belly, a plan in my head and a rough blueprint in my hand. I call my co-conspirator, Robert Edison Sandiford (who had already left the newspaper), and a few weeks later we convene a session of like-minded souls to see how a newsletter called ArtsEtc might get off the ground. We meet at my home (chowing down on a mean chow mein and some fried flying fish to fuel the flood of ideas) and again, later, in a back room at Queen’s Park Gallery.

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.

Pupils of St Margaret's Primary in St John show their best "lightning bolts." We would use Usain Bolt's trademark pose and other fun stretches to prepare for our storybook travels. (Photo: S. A. Devonish)
 

The drive to Glenburnie takes you east to a part of St. John that is so far flung it is practically in the ocean.

I made it my escape every Tuesday for six weeks to read to schoolchildren there.