You say it's your birthday
Well it's my birthday too, yeah
The Beatles, “Birthday”
I ALMOST MISSED my own party.
Party?
Nah. More like the entire birthday.
It was my business partner and partner in literary activism, Linda M. Deane, who had to point out the date.
“So…what are we doing about our twenty years?”
Say what?
When?
“This year. It’s ArtsEtc’s twentieth anniversary.”
It is?
It is.
Linda and I launched in March/April of 2003 as the bi-monthly print newsletter ArtsEtc: The Premier Cultural Guide to Barbados. This was with the National Art Gallery Committee (special shout out to Nick Whittle, and Alissandra Cummins and Maylene Browne), Days Books, the Gems of Barbados group of hotels, the National Cultural Foundation, and the Waterfront Café behind us as major sponsors.
There would be other boosters to join the cavalcade, like our printers Krosstek Publishing and Calton Printing, without whose technical and creative input across twenty-five dynamic print issues we could not have evolved so confidently to an online platform between 2010 and 2011.
Two decades on from our first issue, a lot more seasoned and a little savvier, we’re still at it as a Barbadian cultural resource.
Honestly, I hadn’t realized we were turning twenty until Linda mentioned it to me in a WhatsApp exchange. Sometimes, savvy in abundance or not, our heads can be too much to the plow to see the proper changing of the seasons.
This is why, thankfully, we have partners of all stripes, family and friends, who help to pull us up just at the right moment to see and enjoy what’s going on around us.
ArtsEtc has a few plans for 2023.
One includes the rolling out of the celebratory logo captioned above. It comes courtesy of Akaila Armstrong, a Barbados Community College student in the BFA (Graphics) program who interned with us during the months of February and March. On attachment from BCC, her time with us was funded in part by Barbadian author and art patron Ronald A. Williams. Watch for more of Akaila’s work accompanying upcoming essays, poems and fiction on ArtsEtc’s website. You can also see what else she does here and elsewhere.
Other plans/events/activities to mark the occasion?
There's a Read2Me!/Write4Me! writing workshop for primary school children in conjunction with the Summer Storyteller (one of Linda’s well-known alter egos). A look at twenty Barbadian books published in the past twenty years that have helped to shape our literature and society. The next edition of our special IndyList for young readers and those young at heart, and teachers looking for easily accessible reading material and teaching tools for Bajan Lit.
All this is apart from an IndyList review by Zoanne Evans of Sharma Taylor’s novel, What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You, new poetry from Lynda V. Crawford, and new fiction from Claudia Clarke and Brian Franklin. We've a few publications coming out as part of our Anniverary Chapbook Series, the first being Girl Before Country, poems by Cyndi Celeste.
We’re also looking forward to award-winning work from the 2022 top winners of the Frank Collymore Literary Awards, Peter Laurie and Ark Ramsay. And a photo essay about six Barbadian artists' latest initiative: to incorporate new artwork into one rain shelter and two benches for installation on the Barbados Trailway Project and three bus shelters placed in rural, underserved communities around the island.
Somewhere along the way, you’ll hear from several people who contributed to ArtsEtc’s stamina these last twenty years and our ongoing enthusiasm—fairly (or unfairly?!) setting us up for another twenty years of Mapping Barbados’ Litscape and Artscape.
Happy birthday to us. Glad you could make it to the party. The music loud enough for you? Food and drinks soon come.
Robert Edison Sandiford is the cofounding editor with the poet Linda M. Deane of ArtsEtc Inc. He is the author of several award-winning books and well-received graphic novels. Read more by Robert at dcbooks.ca, nbmpub.com and writersunion.ca/member/robertedison-sandiford.
Last Modified: May 31, 2023
