4 LOVE OF BARBADOS: AN UPDATE

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.

It started out around 2019 as an experiment in schools and vacation workshops and involved getting Barbadian children to think, talk and write about themselves, their families and their environment. It fed into Read2Me-Write4Me, ArtsEtc’s ongoing school’s literacy outreach programme and was inspired in part by Kamau Brathwaite's "The Nines" -- a guide for the enquiring, creative mind that he wrote for ArtsEtc.

This year, with funding from the Commonwealth Foundation, 4 Love of Barbados has morphed into a full-scale operation examining personal, cultural and national identity, asking Barbadians of all ages and from all walks of life questions such as Who are you? Where are you from? And, how do you feel about Barbados?

“The questions seem to have captured people’s imaginations in a big way,” says ArtsEtc co-founder Robert Edison Sandiford. “We’re being forced to really look at issues like independence, freedom and belonging.”

Linda M. Deane, ArtsEtc’s other founder, is the project’s leader. She describes how one of her neighbours who knew she was running the project, knocked on her door one morning with a poem in response to a recent neighborhood shooting.

“It was pretty moving and startling. People do seem to have a lot to say, and they are being very creative with it.” notes Linda, who has been gathering responses for a while now through her work as The Summer Storyteller, a learning guide and writing tutor working mainly with young people and families.

"I feel very excited to have at least one family responding as a unit. I met with them at a gallery earlier this yearand the artwork jumpstarted so many ideas about what Barbados is and who we are. I am looking forward to seeing what they produce."

Linda stresses that 4 Love of Barbados is about encouraging people to express their thoughts, feelings as creatively as possible, and that thte creation of art is key component of the project. “We don’t want people’s responses to sound like the radio call-in programmes or letters to the editor or even a comments section.”

That’s why phase one of the project—the “gathering” stage—saw a team of five tutors, writers and educators joining Linda and Robert on their mission, each in turn reaching out to their own groups and communities, discovering new wordsmiths, poets and storytellers in the process.

Noted poet, columnist and communicator, Adrian Green brought 4G, a group of young spoken word artists he is mentoring, into the fold, with them becoming tutors in their own right. Theatre practitioner Neil Waithe engaged student members of his experimental Leggo Theatre in the exercise; writer and communications specialist Racquel Griffith worked with young rappers, musicians and entrepreneurs from her immediate community; award-winning poet Kerry André Belgrave, a language and linguistics educator, coaxed poetry from his students at Erdiston Teachers Training College. Robert used culinary heritage to engage his design research students at Barbados Community College while Linda took a more random approach, gathering stories and storytellers wherever she encountered them.

Winston Farrell, meanwhile, served as poet-at-large; his recent village-themed poems harmonising with the project’s targeted outreach.

For Independence, 4 Love of Barbados was offered a platform by Varia Williams of Variations Theatre to showcase the stories and responses gathered so far. That storytelling took place in a wonderful setting over two nights Spice of Life, Varia’s residence. 

There were powerful stories and storytelling from teachers, barbers, taxi operators, theatre, design, and medical students, drummers and visual artists as well as poets, spoken word artists, the tutors and Varia herself, who co-emceed with Linda.

The following week, at Barbados Community College (BCC), Robert’s students held a bake-off (or, as one student described it, picnic in a classroom!) They each shared stories of home, family, and new and old cooking traditions through delicious food they had made. Linda, who was chief judge, reports that it was, "hands down, the best job she's ever had as a judge!”

Tutors have until year-end to submit selections of the work they have gathered to ArtsEtc, bringing the project’s first phase to a close. Phases two and three (editing and publishing) are expected to take up most of 2025 with the printing of a teachable anthology the end-goal. From the storytelling at Spice of Life and the BCC bake-off, it is plain the editors have a tough job ahead. 

Even though time is ticking, there is still a way for folks to participate and that’s by taking a stab at the 4 Love of Barbados prose-poem questionnaire. Follow the links. Your words might yet catch the editors’ attention and cause this storytelling project to evolve in ever more unexpected ways.

https://www.artsetcbarbados.com/4-love-barbados-questionnaire

· ArtsEtc would like to thank the following friends, funders, partners and supporters for helping to grow 4 Love of Barbados: The Commonwealth Foundation; Dr Omowale Elson of Elson Consulting Group; Parkinson Old Scholars Association; The Division of Community Development; Erdiston Teachers Training College; StoryShyft; Varia Williams and Variations Theatre; Shadique Thorpe (The Don Bajo); Ms Cheryl Williams and the Barbados Asssociation of Reading (BAR); The Summer Storyteller.