CATAPULT – New Grant Funds for Caribbean Artists

August 5, 2020Leave a comment

American Friends of Jamaica, Kingston Creative and The Fresh Milk Art Platform partner on $320,000 US programme

In light of the severe impact that COVID-19 is having on creative people and the arts sector, a fund of US$320,000 from the Open Society Foundations has been granted to the American Friends of Jamaica, in collaboration with Kingston Creative and The Fresh Milk Art Platform, in support of artists, creatives and cultural practitioners across the Caribbean region. This grant acknowledges the current global pandemic, a crisis disproportionately impacting the creative sector in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), many of which lack the resources to provide adequate support to those working in this vital sector.

Caron Chung, Executive Director AFJ stated, “Many are facing threats to their basic existence today and uncertainty for the future as we are contending with unprecedented challenges. This is a time when we need to work together to offer some semblance of stability to the Arts. Collaboration is at the core of the mission of the AFJ and we are pleased to facilitate the Catapult project.”

CATAPULT | A Caribbean Arts Grant will target participants living and working across the Dutch, English, French, and Spanish speaking regions. This five-month comprehensive arts programme includes funding online creative events, art writing, digital skills training, residencies and virtual discursive salons.

CATAPULT is particularly interested in working with arts and cultural practitioners who are exploring the broad critical themes of Culture, Human Rights, Gender, LGBTQIA+ and Climate Justice from Caribbean perspectives. The team especially welcomes applications from those who do not have permanent employment at this time.

Kingston Creative’s Co-Founder and Executive Director Andrea Dempster-Chung commented, “It has been very exciting to develop this project. It is aligned with our mission to support creative people and is also our first opportunity to work across the region. COVID-19 has had a very serious impact on artists within Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean and this grant will provide the critical financial support, visibility and capacity-building that creatives need to navigate the future.”

CATAPULT will increase the capacity of Caribbean-based artists to navigate the digital space and learn new ways to connect with diverse global audiences. It will also promote the visibility of cultural practitioners by expanding the pool of online content from the region, enabling artists to engage wider audiences while increasing the potential to earn beyond their borders.

The collaboration will support the following projects:

(i) Caribbean Artist Showcase, (ii) Caribbean Creative Online, (iii) Digital Creative Training, (iv) Consultancy Vouchers, (v) Lockdown Virtual Salon and (vi) Stay Home Artist Residency.

Fresh Milk’s Founding Director Annalee Davis expressed enthusiasm regarding the partnership. “Fresh Milk is pleased to have the opportunity to partner on this critical project nurturing Caribbean artists. With little support available at the state level for so many cultural practitioners working across this vulnerable region, having an opportunity to facilitate Stay At Home Residencies and Virtual Salons means that more artists can safely remain in their studios and do what they do best-make art!”

About the Partners:

American Friends of Jamaica | The AFJ has a near 40 year history of funding charitable organizations in Jamaica in the fields of Education, Healthcare and Economic Development. A registered 501 c 3 nonprofit headquartered in New York City, AFJ relies on individual and corporate contributions made by donors who believe in our work and will advocate on our behalf. Part of the AFJ’s mission is to facilitate donor directed contributions which enables donors to support registered charitable organizations aligned with their own goals for philanthropy.

Kingston Creative is a registered non-profit organization founded in February 2017. Its mission is to enable creatives to succeed so that they can create economic and social value, gain access to global markets and have a positive impact on their community.

Fresh Milk is an organisation whose aim is to nurture, empower and connect Caribbean artists, raise regional awareness about contemporary arts and provide global opportunities for growth, excellence and success. Fresh Milk supports excellence in the visual arts through residencies and programmes that provide Caribbean artists with opportunities for development and foster a thriving art community.

Fresh Milk’s 2019 in Review

February 5, 2020Leave a comment

Thank you for your continued support of Fresh Milk!

At the Fresh Milk Art Platform, we believe in the visual arts and its capacity to empower young artists and bring the Caribbean closer together. Through our local, regional and international programming, we have witnessed the benefit of investing in the arts, a sector that is increasingly vital now more than ever before.

With your valuable support, we will continue to contribute to the professional development of visual artists in Barbados, the Caribbean and its diaspora through our streamlined programming in 2020. While hosting fewer artists on site at Fresh Milk, this year’s residency focus will be on Caribbean Linked – a regional residency uniting artists from all linguistic territories in the region. We’ll also be fostering new international residency opportunities for Caribbean-based professionals.

A special focus for Barbados is the We Gatherin’ project and Fresh Milk is keen to participate to this unique event. If you’d like to work with us to commission new work by local artists for the 2020 Fresh Stops project or support new work for the Fresh Milk Art Board,
click that donate button!

It’s very easy to support us by making a donation through this PayPal link. Your contributions make our programmes possible, and gifts of any size are welcome.

The Fresh Milk Team offers warm thanks and deep gratitude,
and invites you to reflect on 2019 with us in our annual
year in review newsletter!

Kia Redman’s Fresh Milk Residency – Week 2 Blog Post

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019Leave a comment

Barbadian artist and aspiring writer Kia Redman shares a blog post on her second week in residence at Fresh Milk. Deviating from carefully laid plans, this week saw a whirlwind of activity for Kia through studio visits, openings, workshops and bonding sessions with her fellow residents. She has been going with the flow and taking in the action, hoping to return to research, writing and production moving forward, with these experiences to reflect on. Read more below:

Peregrination by Ewan Atkinson. Photo by Katherine Kennedy

Colonization in Reverse – Panel in the Enigma of Arrival -The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain Exhibit

Ah know rum an woman – Panel in the Enigma of Arrival -The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain Exhibit

My favourite part about making plans has always been witnessing the innumerable ways life will set them off course. The futility of it all and the sense of powerlessness it instigates is nothing compared to the exhilarating sense of serendipity that just overwhelms every derailed plan. This is the state in which my week progressed.

I ended the first week with a clear vision in mind for the goals I was planning to achieve during my second week at the Colleen Lewis Research/Writing residency. I had planned to get a start on writing and tackle some of the topics I had narrowed down. Life had other plans for me. Monday morning I pitched my idea for my community outreach, and the rest of the week went by in a blur of activity, excitability and camaraderie: One moment you could find us chilling on the studio floor with Ewan, as he shared his work with us. The next I was beating everyone at Ewan’s “unwinnable” game Peregrination. There was the invention of our “fish cake crawl” and its strict judging criteria. Our visit to the opening of The Enigma of Arrival -The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society and our hyped up selfie session. It was a dynamic week.

Criteria

Bubbas fish cakes

Bite

Group selfie

When I wasn’t off learning and bonding, I planned and prepared for my workshop I called ‘The Time Capsule Project’. Geared toward the class 4 students who will soon be leaving Workman’s Primary School, I thought it would be both a fun and important exercise to create a digital time capsule with them. We are all shaped by our histories. Our past memories, decisions, interactions and tales are the building blocks that form our foundations and influence our personalities, and inform our futures. History is something to be respected, cherished and most importantly, documented. Who better to chronicle the stories of a time than those living in it?

Workmans Primary School Workshop – Photo by Ethan Knowles

Friday morning I arrived at Workman’s Primary with Ark and Ethan, who had agreed to help me out. We were escorted to a classroom and I greeted the kids the only courteous way you should approach children forced to sit in a classroom all day: with snacks – more specifically Shirley Biscuits. I played them my stop motion animation,“HOME”, in which the little house from a Shirley biscuit traverses obstacles in an effort to find its way home. It was an example to show them how I chose to record my personal history. What followed was a brief chat on the importance of documenting their personal histories and memories, during which they shared with me the best memories they have from their time at Primary School. Using the cameras donated by a past Fresh Milk resident, I set them free and they spent the next couple hours playing, exploring and capturing whatever they deemed most important.

I won’t say what I foresee for this upcoming week. Regardless of what happens, I’m sure it will be an enjoyable one. I do hope that I will get more reading and writing in though…I really miss my hammock time.

Workmans Primary School Workshop – Photo by Ethan Knowles

Ronald Williams’ Fresh Milk Residency – Week 3.5 Blog Post

May 25, 2018Leave a comment

Barbadian artist Ronald Williams, the recipient of the 2018 Fresh Milk ‘My Time’ Local Artist Residency, shares his blog post for the three and a half week mark in the studio. This part of the residency was largely focused on production, taking the research and influences of previous weeks to experiment with pattern-making and digital collage. On Tuesday May 22nd, Ronald also led a collage & portrait workshop with a group of Class 4 students at Workmans Primary School as the community outreach component of his residency, where the children looked at African masks for inspiration and got creative and expressive with materials. Read more below:

'Without Warning' album by 21 Savage, Offset and record producer Metro Boomin

Week 3 Monday saw me start what I fully intended to be a productive week in solitude. Both Katherine and Daisy were out at the Barbados Museum and the Jewish Synagogue respectively, so I took advantage of my little alone time and was a DJ for a while. Side note: K. O. D. and Without Warning are hard and I’m a lot late to the party but Migos’ two albums are better than I thought they would be. Judge me.

So, first order of real business was to create the pattern I had in mind. The base design is actually the amalgamation of various prints, cut and pasted together in Photoshop and laid on top of a photo of a piece of black fabric. Took much longer than I needed it to. That base image was then flipped, duplicated, pieced together and the process repeated until I got what I wanted. With that, the day was almost up.

I worked on this piece for the rest of the week, getting lost midway, questioning what exactly I was trying to say with the piece and if I could properly translate how I felt without the reading of it going very left. We’ll see.

Week 4 Monday was spent preparing materials for an African mask inspired portraiture collage project that I, along with Katherine and Daisy, would conduct with the Class 4 students at Workman’s Primary School the next day. This project, which was my community outreach portion of the residency, was my personal highlight of the last week and a half. Daisy, Katherine and I all ended up making one. It was fun.

All things considered, a relatively complicated week and a half where everything didn’t go to plan, but an ultimately satisfying one.

Ronald Williams leading a collage workshop at Workmans Primary School

Invitation: Ancestral Architecture

November 11, 2017November 11, 2017Leave a comment

Ancestral Architecture (AA) is a recently founded collective agency led by Umi Baden-Powell and Hannah Catherine Jones intended to generate positive creative responses and conversations surrounding decolonisation and healing for the African Diaspora. At Fresh Milk, AA will be utilising “decolonized” bush rum (the transformation of rum with African herbs and spices) as metaphorical and literal fluid vehicle to connect with and heal themes associated with displacement.

During our artist residency, AA will be studying the processes and transformations (cane to sugar, sugar to alcohol, product to colonial capital, etc.) of rum, a key product in transatlantic slavery. AA will explore the ways our ancestors channelled trickster tactics and used consumption of decolonized bush rum to fuel other decolonisation tactics and self-healing practices – music and performance. These themes will be explored at our first AA meetings on Thursday, November 16th, 2017 from 6-9pm and culminate in a day long residency finisage on Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 at the Fresh Milk Art Platform, Walkers Dairy, St. George.

Performance, ritual, and community collaboration are Ancestral Architecture’s tools for navigating and addressing cultural and collective issues: the trans-generational, the (in)tangible residues of rum’s history. Alchemy (medicine creation via spice), shamanism (healing), and transformation (intoxication) and their historic/contemporary references will be ingredients of our collective performance: a communal consumption of the collaboratively spiced AA rum, the sharing of stories and traditions in an attempt to promote transatlantic antiphony and transcendence.

It is vital that any outcomes of the AA residency be inclusive, sensitive and generous. We want to produce the conditions for dialogue and mutual knowledge exchange by calling out for community participation at the AA meetings (Thursday November 16th + Saturday December 2nd). We are looking to infuse the work with archival, oral and sonic histories from everyone from rum connoisseurs/historians to DIY home-brew spiced rum makers, artists, musicians, performers and spectators.

With permission, performances, talks, rum production, would be documented and shared publicly and online.

Drop in or RSVP to Umi & Hannah at ancestral.architecture@gmail.com