Announcing the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship!

May 6, 2026Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is deeply pleased to share the results of our inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship, which has been made possible with the generous support of Peter Lewis as part of our 2026 Slow Reading Programme. This programme serves to activate Fresh Milk’s Colleen Lewis Reading Room (CLRR), and commemorate Colleen Lewis’s legacy on the 20th anniversary of her passing.

We are delighted to announce that the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship has been awarded to Cyndi Celeste and Connor Harris! Congratulations!

Read the full jury report process below

The Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship was designed with three principal desires in mind:

i) A programme designed by and for artists, writers, and cultural workers with the goal of drawing strength from, and consolidating an awareness across linguistic regions and generations.

ii) A programme that exalts the civic function of the arts and art research by bridging cultural practices with the social contexts to which they are responding, as well as addressing the practical needs of doing this work.

iii) A programme that activates and facilitates exchange of existing work, thought, and feeling between Barbadians and, more broadly, Caribbean people, in order to digest and counteract the prevailing sense of isolation and/or apathy our economic and social condition can perpetuate.

The Bocas Lit Fest — held annually in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago — represents the most significant literary event in the Anglo-Caribbean. Held this year from April 30th to May 3rd, it generates a period of crucial enrichment, exchange and celebration for our region’s cultural sector. We determined sponsored attendance of this festival for a Bajan writer to be a necessary element of the Slow Reading Programme, in order to take part in the world-building activities and tools that literature, arts and archiving generate, helping to foster the imagination required to navigate the nuances of the Caribbean.

The Award Details

The Bocas Lit Fest scholarship includes:

Round-trip airfare to Trinidad and Tobago.
4 nights of accommodation at the Kapok Hotel.
Airport transfers.
A daily allowance for the 4-day duration of the festival.

Candidate Requirements:

Candidates must be 21 years of age or older and based in Barbados.
Candidates must hold a passport valid for at least 6 months for travel to Trinidad and Tobago.
Candidates must be available to travel for the full duration of the festival (April 30th – May 3rd).
Upon completion, Candidates agree to collaborate with Fresh Milk to craft a journalistic reflection/report on the experience to be shared across our public platforms.

Procedure

On March 12th, Fresh Milk contacted three esteemed members of the local literary community:

Dr. Debra Providence, Lecturer at The Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures.
Robert Sandiford, co-founder of ArtsEtc publishing company, writer, editor and part time faculty at the Barbados Community College Division of Fine Arts Department.
Andy Taitt, owner of Black Rock Books book store and community hub for literary events.

Providing the above mentioned background, we requested they collaborate as nominators, selecting 2 candidates each by the deadline of March 23rd.

The nominators selected the following individuals as nominees:

Cyndi Celeste
Claudia Clarke
Christopher Cox
Kemar Doughty
Connor Harris
Shondrell Meredith

On March 25th the nominees were contacted to be notified of their candidacy, and were requested to submit a 500-750 word Letter of Motivation by April 3rd, articulating the following:

Why they are a suitable candidate for this scholarship.
Describing the main themes or areas of interest in their literary craft, and if there are emerging themes in particular that they would like to further explore through attending Bocas LitFest.
How attending Bocas LitFest will impact their professional development and area of interest.

All 6 Letters of Motivation were shared with and reviewed by the Fresh Milk team and Fresh Milk’s Board Members:

Natalie McGuire, Curator of Social History and Engagement at the Barbados Museum & Historical Society
Rae Skinner, Founder of Caribbean Brushstrokes Gallery

The decision making process was made through each board member representing one vote, and the Fresh Milk team representing a third vote.

General Comments

Each candidate’s Letter of Motivation reflected exciting and compelling insight into their practice, their desires and some background to their work.

Cyndi Celeste wrote of her keen dedication to exploring the themes of nation language, futurism, and “acts of re-membering as personal and collective repair”, with a special focus on the Caribbean Voice and orality. Their years spent organising events and opportunities for the broader literary and academic community, as well as for the general public, is reflected in their attention to innovating methodologies, and the social role that the literary arts must uphold.

Claudia Clarke described her commitment to writing women-centric fiction, to assert the presence of nuanced mid-life experiences in contemporary Barbados, and bringing to life the multiple layers of an invisibilised demographic. She remarks on how the “All Together Now” theme of Bocas Lit Fest this year resonates strongly with the predominantly solitary nature of literary craft which, as an emerging middle-aged writer herself, is of particular importance to engage with opportunities for community and knowledge exchange.

Christopher Cox shared his craft as dedicated to interrogations of the ills and virtues of the human psyche primarily through humorous story telling and plots of intrigue and conspiracy. He seeks to use these as vehicles to blend Caribbean History with new ways of storytelling, re-imagining past elements in exciting new settings like science fiction and modern fantasy.

Kemar Doughty spoke of his keen interest in addressing Caribbean masculine identities and the intersection of religion and sexuality in the region, as well as his curiosity at the intersection of linguistics and literary criticism. Importantly, he touches on his position as an academic and creative from an urban working class Bajan background, working within an under-narrated area to which he dedicates his voice and talents.

Connor Harris described her deep interest in working through themes of magical realism, and her particular focus on the Caribbean gap within the global canon of encyclopedias of symbolism related to regional mythologies and folklore. She reflected a well-studied understanding of her craft and its relevance within our current context, dedicated to spiritual and religious themes pertinent to cultural rites of self-actualisation, touching on memory, death/rebirth and the shadow.

Shondrell Meredith illustrated her journey from beginning as an avid reader using novels as a means to travel the world, and becoming acquainted with life in other Caribbean islands through fiction, to growing into a creator of her own stories that portray a fresh perspective of Barbadian life. She identified her motivation to bridge cultural gaps and portray our similarities in an engaging way, commenting on the value that attending Bocas Lit Fest would have for her to deepen not only her experience as an emerging writer, but also to gain a better understanding of the world of publishing and marketing.

Results

It was a difficult process evaluating the candidates, as each writer presented compelling niches and interests that would undoubtedly benefit from the opportunity to attend Bocas Lit Fest. On the one hand this positively indicates that the literary talent in Barbados is growing ambitiously, and is responding creatively to the needs of our local context. However, it signals that the cultural infrastructure and opportunities to accommodate these ambitions needs to develop and expand in tandem, in order to adequately meet the needs and desires expressed by writers from different backgrounds and practicing diverse genres.

We designed this scholarship with the initial intention of offering it to one candidate; however, upon evaluation of the top candidates we noticed that their profiles were very much complimentary and would benefit from close interaction. We therefore decided to adjust our Slow Reading Programme budgeting in order to grant the scholarship to two awardees.

We are delighted to announce that the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship has been awarded to Cyndi Celeste and Connor Harris.

A huge thank you to Peter Lewis for making this scholarship possible, and to the nominators for their role in stewarding our local literary ecosystem.

We strongly encourage you to follow and support the trajectory of all the candidates, each with unique merits:

Claudia Clarke
Website: https://www.claudiaclarkewriter.com
Instagram: @claudiaclarkewriter

Shondrell Meredith
“These Fields and Hills” (2023) on Amazon
Instagram: @pennedbyshondrell

Kemar Doughty
Inkitt: https://www.inkitt.com/kemjlu

Christopher Cox
Instagram: @hypothetical.arts

Cyndi Celeste
Website: https://cyndiceleste.com/home
Instagram: @cyndi.celeste

Paradise, For Whom? Rethinking the Caribbean Landscape through Colleen Lewis’s Essay

March 26, 2026Leave a comment

Fresh Milk and the Barbados Museum & Historical Society (BMHS) are honoured to invite you to an evening celebrating the memory of Colleen Lewis, and her enduring legacy in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room located at Fresh Milk, Walker’s Dairy, St. George.

Painting featured: “Deux femmes causant au bord de la mer, Saint Thomas” (Camille Pissarro, 1856. Accessed from wikicommons.

As part of the 2026 Slow Reading Programme, we will share critical reflections on the history of how our landscapes have been shaped by the foreign gaze, using Colleen’s 2004 essay ““Pictorial Depictions of the West Indian Landscape in the 18th century and early 19th century: the sublime, the picturesque, the romantic” as a point of departure.

RSVP HERE!

Hosted in the Sir Trevor Carmichael Walled Garden Theatre at the BMHS, panelists Dr. Geoffrey Ward, Peter Thompson, Anne Bancroft, and Alissandra Cummins will share a diverse cross-section of perspectives on the topic and its relevance both in our historical and current setting.

Creative responses crafted in Fresh Milk’s collective writing workshop in January, inspired by the calypsonian tradition and a guided walk through the Barbados Trailway in St. George, will be read by poets Cyndi Celeste and Stacey Alvarez. The full series of poems by all participants will be shared via a print fanzine.

We invite you to take part in this Slow Reading Process; take the time to read Colleen’s article available to download in our RSVP form. We also ask for you to share any questions to panelists beforehand, which you can submit by writing to freshmilksocials@gmail.com.

Send us your RSVP by Monday April 13th! See you then!

About the panelists:

Alissandra Cummins, GCM, FMA, is Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society and serves as Vice President of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience as well as the Barbados National Commission for UNESCO. She was elected President of the International Council of Museums (2004-2010) having previously served as Chairperson of its Advisory Committee for six years. A recognized authority on Caribbean heritage, museum development and art, and was awarded the Barbados Governmen’s Gold Crown of Merit in 2005. She was elected a Fellow of the Museums Association (UK) and as a member of the Commonwealth Association of Museums’ eminent Cowrie Circle. Ms. Cummins lectures part time on Heritage and Museum Studies at the University of the West Indies. She has served as chair/vice chair and/or member in a number of regional and international heritage programmes and publications, instruments and entities, including President of the Executive Board of UNESCO (2009-2011) and Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Intangible Heritage.

Anne Bancroft is a collection care specialist with over 20 years’ experience in the heritage sector. She has worked internationally as a preservation and conservation consultant across the West Indies, India, Italy, and the UK. Anne currently serves as Head of Collection Care and Conservation at both the Barbados Museum & Historical Society and ROADs National Digitisation Programme. She holds two masters degrees in conservation from Camberwell College and the Courtauld Institute of Art, with a focus on technical art history. In addition she has a Bachelor’s of Arts from BCC. She has previously worked with leading institutions including the V&A Museum and Tate Britain. Her research focuses on sacred objects, and she brings a forensic, materials-based perspective to the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage.

Geoffrey Ward completed his undergraduate degree in History at the University of Western Ontario in Canada before returning home to Barbados. He was awarded his PhD from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill Campus) in 2022, investigating the political, social and economic interactions between the Barbadian Populace and British naval personnel in the American Revolution. He recently completed an R.L. Seale / University of the West Indies post-doctoral fellowship, investigating the relationship between Rum and the Barbados plantation economy between 1775 and 1815.

Peter L. Thompson grew up in Barbados but fled the day after he wrote his last secondary school exam. He departed with the certainty and irrevocability of every teenage heartbreak… Yet even as Air Canada turned to the final north, affection strained, but space and time couldn’t snap it. He returned at last to his native land nine years ago, after a many decade long art gallery/management consulting career in Canada. He works now to understand how to take risks in the pursuit of meaning. His love affair with Barbados is unrequited, still.

The CLRR Slow Reading Programme #1

October 16, 2025Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is excited to share with you our first activation to inaugurate our Slow Reading Programme, an initiative dedicated to “building intimacy with our books while shaping a community of readers locally and across our archipelago.”

In memory of writer and art historian Colleen Lewis — whose collection of publications dedicated to Caribbean literature, history and contemporary art form the foundation of the Fresh Milk reading room — this programme invites you to form a bridge that cuts through the noise of our current media landscape in order to engage deeply with the Caribbean literary landscape.

Programme #1 – Reflecting on the Lucayan Archipelago Residency

From September to November of 2024, Poinciana Paper Press became home to the first participants of the Lucayan Archipelago Residency in The Bahamas, with the support of the Panta Rhea Foundation.

Barbadian writer Ark Ramsay joined forces with book artist Joko Viruet Feliciano from Puerto Rico to create a collaborative work that develops a critical cultural dialogue with the Bahamian ecosystems and resources.

“Un Santo a la Vez/A Prayer in Motion” is the result of this inter-island encounter, materialised in a carefully hand-bound book conceptualised and crafted by Joko which houses Ark’s written reflections, and masterfully put together under the guidance of Sonia Farmer, founder of PPP.

To bring the nuances and depth of this work into view, Fresh Milk invited established Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and book blogger Shivanee Ramlochan to connect with Ark in an organically meandering conversation of like-hearted souls. We have the privilege of sharing the recording of this exchange with a public audience, inviting you to join in the thoughtful contemplation of the pressing issues that our region collectively confronts.

Joko joins in the reflective process asynchronously, sharing audio recordings and images that guide us through the residency experience from her perspective.

See the full programme here

Kia Redman’s Fresh Milk Residency – Week 3 Blog Post

July 3, 2019Leave a comment

Barbadian artist and aspiring writer Kia Redman shares a blog post on her third week in residence at Fresh Milk. In addition to activities such as attending a reception for the ‘Trio of Residents’ held by one of Fresh Milk’s patrons, returning to Workman’s Primary School to reveal the result of their group time capsule project and taking part in a collage workshop about Caribbean identity hosted by Ethan Knowles, Kia also began the daunting task of venturing into creative writing – something she has not done in a very long time, but that she is eager to take the leap to explore. Read more below:

Creative writing has been a big fear of mine for a long time. I remember it being something I fearlessly enjoyed once, but that time passed so long ago I can barely remember the words I wrote and the feelings they conjured within me. It has been so long that I don’t even know where to find the stories, and if I did, the papers would probably be in tatters, darkened and consumed by time. So many years have passed since then that it almost feels like another person’s story; another person’s path not taken. But the best thing about life, at least mine, is that the path is hardly ever straight and easy. There are steep inclines, rugged terrains and winding roads that if you’re lucky, wind back around to give you a second chance at exploring a previously untrodden path.

This unfamiliar journey started with this residency. I spent the first couple weeks researching for a critical essay that I hoped would inform my visual work. It was what I had planned to do, it was what I felt comfortable with, having written strictly academically for the last few years. It was the safe option. However deep down, something just felt a little off. Residencies are supposed to push you out of your comfort zone and encourage you to explore and experiment – something I love to do – but I was resisting it. It has been a long time since I’ve felt truly afraid to do something creative.

A True and Exact History by Sonia Farmer

My visual work still scares me, and I hope it never stops. Having to learn and discover, fail and adapt is what excites me. Yet, while that has become a fear I have learned to embrace and use as fuel to push my visual practice, this fear is as yet uncharted. There is no evidence that the failures I’ll endure along this path will result in something fruitful. It has not yet proven itself to me, nor have I proven myself to it. It is my hope that this confrontation will clear the way for a bridge between my visual and literary work. I love combining different techniques and art-forms in what I create, and the challenge of merging both of these worlds into one thrills me. Sonia Farmer’s “A True and Exact History” stands on that bridge. The fusing of visual, tactile and literal is simply breathtaking and stole away much of my time this week.

Kia Redman speaking about her work

Ethan Knowles speaking about his work with Ark Ramsay and Kia Redman

Ethan Knowles and Kia Redman

Adaeze performing at Dr. Clyde Cave’s house

Collages made during the workshop ‘Dis We Tings’ facilitated by Ethan Knowles

Participants in the collage workshop ‘Dis We Tings’ facilitated by Ethan Knowles

This third chapter has been packed full of reading, thinking, creating and socializing. I’ve walked and explored with Ethan and Ark and stood beside them at Dr. Clyde Cave’s house for the vibrant yet relaxed evening he hosted for us, amongst his incredible art collection. I returned to Workman’s Primary to show them the video they shot and give them copies. Ethan’s collage workshop on Wednesday was a fun experience that allowed me to tackle my topic in a lighthearted way without the pressures I usually inadvertently place upon the process of creating. It was a breath of fresh air just being able to enjoy the act of making without all the strings that somehow get attached along the path of being an artist. Perhaps it was the reminder of that feeling that made me finally agree to confront my fears to write creatively. It is a feeling I must remember in the final week as I commit to setting pen to paper.

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.