The British Council worked in partnership with the Bocas Lit Fest and the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Jamaica, to host a comprehensive workshop in reviewing books/literature and visual arts aimed at Anglophone Caribbean arts writers and culture journalists.
From January 9 to 13, and based at UWI’s Mona campus in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, the workshop brought together a mix of eleven early-career and mid-level professional arts writers from Jamaica, Bahamas, St Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Barbados and T&T for five days of high-level, hands-on training.
A thriving arts sector requires culture journalists writing about and reviewing the arts for mass media, a release said. Across the Anglophone Caribbean, there is a shortage of trained, experienced arts writers able to instigate interest in our creative forms in the public sphere. This workshop was therefore designed to help emerging arts writers improve the quality of their coverage and contribute to enhanced attention to arts and culture in the media and broader society.
The workshop covered key issues common to writing about all cultural forms while focusing on specific issues relevant to two key areas of the arts: books and literature, visual arts. For example, the role of arts journalism in the cultural ecosystem, the critic’s responsibilities to the writer or artist, subjectivity vs objectivity; opinions vs fact, ethical and legal issues, and more.
In an effort to expand the NGO’s mandate as a literary development agency, Bocas Lit Fest made its first intervention of this kind in September 2016 with its Food Matters food writing workshop held in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries.
“We’re very grateful to the British Council for making this development opportunity a reality because we need to enhance our cultural environment by giving our critics the tools of the trade. In the maze of information and misinformation, we need some hand-holding in helping make sense of it all, the riches and the nonsense,” states Marina Salandy-Brown, founder and director of the Bocas Lit Fest.
The writing workshops form part of an ongoing Bocas workshop series dedicated to covering the local and regional creative landscape; future installments will focus on film, music, the performing arts and fashion.
For another perspective, Keisha Oliver writes for the The Nassau Guardian Ltd. about her experience of having participated in this workshop. Her writing titled “Nurturing art criticism in the Caribbean” speaks to the benefit of invaluable cultural exchange, professional networking and information sharing among the eleven participants. Read her article here: https://www.thenassauguardian.com/lifestyles/arts-and-culture/70580-nurturing-art-criticism-in-the-caribbean.