Fresh Milk is pleased to share our 2023 highlights newsletter, including our work with amazing partners locally, regionally and internationally, while celebrating grants that have us bursting with gratitude and happiness!

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In Barbados, we collaborated with the Future Centre Trust on our project for the Healing Arts Initiative (a programme by UK-based organisation Culturunners), while regionally we worked on an offshoot of the Caribbean Linked residency programme with Ateliers ‘89 Punto di Beyas Arte Aruba, the BIAC-Réseaux and Campus Caraïbeen des Arts (CCA) in Martinique, and participated in the inaugural FUZE Art Expo in the Bahamas. Internationally, our relationships with Rotterdam- and Amsterdam-based partners have grown deeper through the Tilting Axis Fellowship.

We’re also beyond delighted to celebrate with all of you the most amazing news of Fresh Milk having been successfully awarded a grant for 2024-2026 by the US-based Mellon Foundation’s Arts and Culture programme in support of our operating and programming expenses.

Mellon believes that “Art and artists are essential to human connection,” and we couldn’t agree more. We go into action this year to work on elevating the local contemporary visual art community in exciting ways, continuing to support the region’s creative network, while also looking for new partners to come on board. Stay tuned for more information as we focus on the local and Caribbean contemporary visual art community with some exciting plans for the next three years!

Read the full newsletter here

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If you would like to support the work we do in Caribbean arts, go ahead and click on the donate button below! It’s very easy to support us and the artists we work with by making a donation through this PayPal link. Your contributions make our programmes possible, and gifts of any size are welcome.

Thank you for your continued support, and we’d like to express gratitude to the many artists who we have had the honour of working with across the Caribbean as we continue to find ways of celebrating and nurturing creativity.

We look forward to continuing our creative journey together in 2024, and hope for peace and the cessation of war and conflict the world over.

The BIAC in collaboration with Caribbean Linked presents “TRANS-SISTORS”

October 6, 2023October 6, 2023Leave a comment

As part of the International Biennial of Contemporary Art (BIAC) in Martinique, supported by the European fund INTERREG Caribbean, the Campus Caraïbéen des Arts (CCA) in partnership with the Collectivité Territoriale de Martinique (CTM), and Ateliers’ 89 in Aruba, the exhibition “TRANS-SISTORS” will run from October 7 to November 6, 2023, at the La Véranda Gallery of the Tropiques Atrium, Scène Nationale in Fort de France, Martinique.

This exhibition is produced under the curatorship of Elvis Lopez, Director of Ateliers ’89 and a visual artist from Aruba. Four young artists from the Caribbean: Franz Caba (Dominican Republic), Taisha Carrington (Barbados), Chamika Germain (St. Martin) and Brice Lautric (Guadeloupe), will exhibit the work they produced as part of the Caribbean Linked artist residency exchange which took place in Martinique and Aruba between April and September.

Caribbean Linked is a program of artist residencies and exhibitions offering a space to raise awareness of the region’s disparate creative communities by bringing together emerging artists from the English, French, Spanish, and Dutch Caribbean.

This exhibition, held at the Tropiques-Atrium, was born from the desire to show the general public the work made by these artists during their residency. Two of the artists, Germain and Lautric, are CCA graduates. Since the start of 2023 and as part of the BIAC, residency exchanges with international artists, and curatorial training for students in collaboration with Martinique-based institutions are being coordinated by the Campus Caraïbéen Arts. This regional exchange programme will continue through 2024.

Launch of Fresh Milk/Healing Arts Initiative Public Art Projects

April 17, 2023April 17, 2023Leave a comment

What: Launch of Fresh Milk/Healing Arts Initiative Public Art Projects
When: April 29th, 5-6 pm
Where: The Carmichael/Trailway Crossing, St. George

The Fresh Milk Art Platform, Future Centre Trust, Environ Ltd (Adopt A Stop Barbados) and The Healing Arts Initiative in partnership with CULTURUNNERS as part of the World Health Organization are pleased to invite you to the launch of a collection of artistic interventions which will be held at the Carmichael/Trailway crossing on the Barbados Trailway (click the link for a Google Maps Pin).

Six local artists have been commissioned to create new works strategically installed as artistic interventions on the Trailway and incorporated into bus shelters placed in rural, underserved communities around the island as an outdoor exhibition opportunity.

The artists whose works we are celebrating include Anna Gibson who has provided artwork for the rain shelter, Dion Gibson and Anya Greaves who have provided artwork for the benches on the Trailway. The bus shelters will be situated in St. John, St. George, and St. Andrew with a series of new works created by Joshua Clarke, Versia Harris, and Amelia Rouse.

Do join us and the artists at the Carmichael/Trailway crossing which will be accessible via the Boarded Hall Road where parking will be available. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be available.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

This project recognises the role of the arts sector in addressing the growing mental health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, followed and further impacted by the La Soufriere volcanic eruption and Category 1 Hurricane Elsa.

The pandemic and occurrence of natural disasters have reminded us of the value of green spaces and the natural environment to enhance our physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. It is well known that people, and children in particular, recover better and flourish in the outdoors. While Barbados is blessed with many beaches where locals can recreate, there isn’t enough variety of safe outdoor recreational activities promoting active mobility for young people and families.

The Future Centre Trust has been working for some time to repurpose the historic train line located in the south-central part of the island in the St. George Valley.

With the support of the Healing Arts Initiative, Fresh Milk is pleased to be collaborating with the Future Centre Trust and Environ Ltd (Adopt A Stop Barbados) to work with local artists and to strategically install these artistic interventions on the trailway as a linear outdoor exhibition opportunity, giving artists a chance to contribute to this dynamic and highly anticipated public project. Secondly, we proposed the intervention of three additional outreach solar bus shelters to be placed in underserved rural communities.

Healing Arts was launched in 2020 under the auspices of the World Health organization as part of The Future is Unwritten, a global initiative calling for urgent cooperation between the Arts Sector and United Nations Agencies in order to amplify and accelerate the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the most ambitious and comprehensive global development plan in human history. With leading UN Agencies describing the recent pandemic as nature’s first ‘warning shot’ to civilizations playing with fire, global cultural action that contributes to the envisioning and shaping of a more resilient, healthy, and sustainable future is now more urgent than ever.

Established as part of the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary Programme (UN75) and Decade of Action, Healing Arts 2020-2030 is produced in 2022 by CULTURUNNERS and Arts & Health @ NYU under the secretariat of the World Health Organization’s Arts and Health Program.

TVE 4 Artist Talk & Closing Event

January 27, 2022Leave a comment

Closing Event – Transoceanic Visual Exchange 2021
Date: February 2nd, 2022
Time: 4:00 – 5:30 PM (CST) / 6:00 – 7:30 PM (AST)

Via Zoom
Meeting ID: 885 8020 0966
Passcode: 323839

Moderator: Russell Watson (Barbados, works as an interdisciplinary visual artist, multimedia educator and media professional)

Participating Artists: Kayla Archer (Barbados), Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala), Milko Delgado (Panamá), David Gumbs (St. Martin/Martinique), Natalia Lassalle-Morillo (Puerto Rico), Patricia Villalobos (Nicaragua).

The fourth edition of Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE) held between November 2021 and February 2022 is a collaboration between The Fresh Milk Art Platform (Barbados) and TEOR/ética (Costa Rica). For this edition of TVE, a selection of recent video artworks produced both in the Central American region and in the insular Caribbean region were brought together through an open call and community-led curatorial model, and presented to the public through a virtual exhibition.

For the closing event of TVE 4, we invite some of the artists participating in this virtual exhibition from across both regions to be in conversation with one another, with the aim of putting their works in dialogue and deepening the understanding of themes and relationships that connect recent audiovisual practices of contemporary artists from Central America and the Caribbean.

Join the Zoom webinar here!

The event will be moderated in English, and will have simultaneous translation into Spanish via Zoom.

Visit the virtual exhibition here, extended until February 2nd!

Caribbean Linked VI 2021 – Closing Event at Ateliers ’89

August 31, 2021August 31, 2021Leave a comment

On Wednesday September 1st, between 4 – 5 pm (AST), there will be a closing event for the virtual edition of Caribbean Linked VI, taking place at Ateliers ’89, Aruba, and broadcasted live by TELE ARUBA!

Click here to access the livestream on TELE ARUBA, Channel 23

The event will also highlight the exhibition P A N, God’s Artist (In Times of Covid), with many of the participating artists (including Caribbean Linked VI residents & Caribbean Linked alumni) present to discuss their work in the show.

About P A N:

P A N, God’s artists (In Times of Covid) or Pan the bread that hasn’t been given to the artists during the hard times of the Covid period. A presentation of expressions by artists on the Island’s Covid management during the pandemic. An open criticism reflects the hard times of God’s artists in times of Covid.

Watch a Youtube video showcasing the exhibition here

Do not miss the unique opportunity to attend the two events – whether online or on the ground in Aruba – and interact with local Aruban artists!

Caribbean Linked is a regional residency co-managed by Ateliers ’89 (Aruba), The Fresh Milk Art Platform (Barbados) and ARC Magazine. Huge thanks to the event sponsors, The Government of Aruba, TPEF, TELE ARUBA, Mondriaan Fonds, UNOCA, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Bank Giro Loterij, VNO, Cine Aruba, SETAR, Rotaract
Aruba, Garage Centraal and Vibartion PR.