Storytelling with YOU at the heart

Who you?

What part you from?

How you feel bout life in this here Buhbayduss?

These Kamau-inspired questions form the essence of ArtsEtc’s brand new adventure 4 Love of Barbados, a literacy and publishing project that has YOU at its heart!

4 Love of Barbados (or 4LB for short) encourages participants, both writers and non-writers, to explore and express their connections to Barbados through their creativity–poetry, stories, thoughts, spoken word and artwork. The project, funded by a Commonwealth Foundation Caribbean grant, falls under ArtsEtc’s existing literacy outreach programme Read2Me-Write4Me, and is part of our long-term initiative to map the literature of Barbados. It officially began the day after International Literacy Day and runs for a year.

With us we have a team of fabulous tutors who will help participants unleash their creativity on the issues that matter most to them: Identity, nationhood, parenthood, freedom and freedom of speech, health, crime and violence, family, education, opportunities, environment and climate justice; how Barbados used to be, how it is now. How it might be in the future. And more.

So, if you see Kerry Andre Belgrave, Winston Farrell, Adrian Green, Racquel Griffith, Neil Waithe, ArtsEtc’s Robert Edison Sandiford or Linda M Deane (The Summer Storyteller) or any of our plucky volunteers in your midst over the coming months, have your answers to those Kamau-like questions ready!  

Your creative contributions could end up showcased and in print, celebrating the essence of this island we care so much about.

ArtsEtc mindfully extends its gratitude to the folks at the Commonwealth Foundation and to others who are generously supporting the project.  Look out soon for more information about the project, its partners and tutors, and how to try your hand at a 4 Love of Barbados prose-poem!