Tag: Colleen Lewis Reading Room

Fresh Milk Welcomes a Trio of Residents for June 2019

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Fresh Milk is excited to announce that we will have three writers/researchers in residence with us for the month of June, 2019: Bahamian writer and photographer Ethan Knowles (June 10th – July 5th) as part of our international residency programme; Barbadian artist Kia Redman (June 10th – July 5th) as the selected participant in the Colleen Lewis Research/Writing Residency; and Barbadian writer Ark Ramsay (June 17th – July 12th) as the sponsored participant in this year’s ‘My Time’ Local Residency Programme.

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About the Residents:

Ethan Knowles

Ethan Knowles is a writer and photographer from The Bahamas. His work, largely tied to the islands of the Lucayan archipelago on which he grew up, aims to decolonize and sensitize, paying particular attention to topics of cultural erasure, environmentalism and identity in the Caribbean. After completing his high school education in Nassau, he spent two years in Italy at the United World College of the Adriatic and graduated with his International Baccalaureate diploma in May 2018. He is now enrolled at Colorado College in the United States, working part-time as a photographer while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Italian. Over the past few summers, he has published writing on tourism, culture, and neocolonialism in The Nassau Guardian, worked as a curatorial attaché for and exhibited at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas and, most recently, been awarded the James Yaffe Prize for Short Fiction by the Colorado College English Department for a story set on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera.

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Kia Redman

Kia Redman is a creative professional living and working in Barbados. She attained her BFA in Studio Art from the Barbados Community College where she received an award from the Lesley’s Legacy Foundation for the highest GPA.

She has worked as a scenic painter for Operation Triple Threat, taught video marketing at the World University Service of Canada Caribbean, participated in an open studio residency with Punch Creative Arena and taken part in local group shows and screenings internationally. In 2018 her short film Roots|Routes won six awards including Best Short Film at the Barbados Visual Media Festival.

Kia currently works as a designer and videographer for Acute Vision Inc. and Bajans in Motion Inc. whilst cultivating her creative practice.

Being born into a post-independent nation in formation, Kia’s work focuses on issues of identity, defining culture and documenting histories. She aims to rewrite the blanket definition taught to be her Caribbean identity and discover the things unique to her lived experience.

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Ark Ramsay

Ark Ramsay is a 25-year-old Barbadian writer, currently completing an MPhil in Chinese Philosophy at Fudan University in Shanghai. Their short fiction has been published in Small Axe (50) in 2016, after winning that journal’s emerging writer’s contest. Ark’s writing is centered around queer, Caribbean identities and coping with the reality of a warming earth–the fragility of an island ecosystem that cannot fight back.

Ark will begin an M.F.A in creative writing at Ohio State University in the Fall.

The Colleen Lewis Research/Writing Residency 2019 – Deadline Extended

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Thanks to the support of a generous donor, Fresh Milk is pleased to offer a Barbadian-based writer, scholar, researcher, curator or art historian a one-month residency at Fresh Milk!

 

Proposals must demonstrate interest in engaging with the material in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room (CLRR) as a critical resource, articulating the value of the residency opportunity in a retreat-like location as a time for research, production of new writing or scholarship and expansion of references & knowledge.

The CLRR offers resource materials which may be used for research purposes and as a source of inspiration. The selected resident will be asked to share informal reviews or responses to CLRR publications as a way to activate the collection and interface with the public. At the end of the residency, they will have the opportunity to share their research outcomes or new writings with the local community.

About Colleen Lewis

Colleen Heather Lewis (nee Shaw) was born on July 12th 1962 in Canada. She died in Barbados on September 6th 2006.  Many of the books in this reading room have come from Colleen’s own collection of books which she acquired while doing an art history degree in Toronto and her Masters in Cultural Studies at Cave Hill, reflecting her interest in and love for the arts. The Colleen Lewis Reading Room collection has been established in her name to keep her memory alive and reflects the generosity of her spirit.

Duration of Residency:  4 weeks

Fresh Milk will provide:

– A $1,000.00 BBD stipend to the resident
– Wireless internet
– A 15.5 x 14 ft research space
– A wide expanse of rural land
– Access to the Colleen Lewis Reading Room on-site
– A varied network of creatives to connect with
– The option of professional mentorship is available if desired
– Fresh Milk will facilitate public activities during the residency such as a presentation of the resident’s research/writing in a public event or the hosting of critical discussions

Eligibility criteria:

– Applicants must be Barbadian residents, living and working in Barbados
– Applicants must be able to work independently, be highly motivated, self-directed individuals
–  The resident must not have taken part in an on-site Fresh Milk Residency within the last 2 years.

Expectations of the Resident:

–  The Resident must come out to the studio a minimum of four days per week between Monday and Friday. Studio access is between 8 am and 6 pm.
–  As a form of public outreach and as a way to activate the content in the reading room, the resident must be willing to share reviews or responses to some of the material in the library during their residency (see examples of previous reviews/reflections on our Fresh Milk Books platform)
–  The resident will be required to keep a weekly blog of their activities and processes, and submit a report to Fresh Milk at the conclusion of the residency

Application Process:

To be considered, please submit the following to freshmilkbarbados@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Colleen Lewis Research/Writing Residency 2019 Proposal’:

–   The completed application form which can be downloaded here (includes applicant’s contact information, statement about their practice, and full residency proposal)
–  An up to date Curriculum Vitae (CV)
–  A selection of writing samples that offer a strong representation of your practice or current research focus
– We seek proposals that will actively engage with the CLRR collection

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The deadline for submission has been extended until April 12th, 2019. The residency will take place between June 10th – July 5th, 2019.

Sacred Practices Reading Group

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Join us for a series of sessions facilitated by our current international resident artist Daisy Diamond, applying traditional spiritual reading practices to non-religious, contemporary or critical material focused on arts, culture and Caribbean thought collaboratively selected from Fresh Milk’s Colleen Lewis Reading Room. These collective ways of reading will be used to analyze and have meaningful, open ended conversations about the texts and how they may relate to lived experiences. The first session will be held on Thursday, May 17th, 2018 from 6pm-8pm at Fresh Milk.

RSVP to freshmilkbarbados@gmail.com to confirm your interest! Directions can be found on the ‘About Page’ of our website.

Statement from Daisy about the Reading Group:

Come together in an open-ended conversation where we will select a text to treat as “sacred” by guiding our reading with a series of spiritual reading practices. The texts will not be religious in content. We will just use these traditionally religious tools to analyze, dig deeper, and test our assumptions. The only requirements for this are an open curiosity and a commitment to dialogue within a community.

As an introduction to sacred reading practices, here are two examples which enable a semi-structured study of texts without a teacher/student hierarchy. Havruta is an ancient, Jewish practice where one student within a group poses a question about a text the group is familiar with. The student who asks the question then proposes one potential answer to their own question and explains their reasoning to the group. The group then challenges, opposes, or builds upon the initial response to the question. This platform for conversation builds both nuance and clarity. Lectio Divina is a Catholic practice for studying Scriptures. One person in the group will randomly select a sentence from the text. We will then pause on it and discuss what the word or passage is calling us to do or become. The random selection generates a surprising point to intentionally and thoughtfully build on.

The point of these practices is not to come to one, unified conclusion. Meaning and purpose proliferate in the disagreement, conversation, and unfolding exploration of interpretations and applications. I am not a theologian, but I am a student interested in building upon my understanding of engaging with texts intentionally and passionately within a community. If you have an understanding of tools to study texts, please come and be a part of this opportunity to teach and learn with others!

I’m interested in discussing a text from the Colleen Lewis Reading Room at Fresh Milk related to creative rituals, collective art practices, arts and revolution, or the influence of cultural tradition on contemporary artists. If any of these topics interest you, or if you have another direction you would like to go in, please join me Thursday, May 17th, 2018 to begin to discuss which text we will use and the methods for sacred reading.

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About Daisy Diamond:

Daisy Diamond is a painter, animator, and student originally from Philadelphia who values interdisciplinary and intersectional collaborative exploration. She is currently pursuing a BA in Studio Art from Bates College and spent this past year as a visiting student at Rhode Island School of Design. While she is a resident at the Fresh Milk space, she plans to research the history of Judaism in Barbados and the relationship between ritualistic sacred practices and artistic creation.

 

Reading Room Open Day – Saturday May 5th, 2018

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Fresh Milk invites you to come check out our Reading Room Open Day, this Saturday, May 5th 2018, anytime between the hours of 10am-4pm!

The Colleen Lewis Reading Room at Fresh Milk is a mini-library of about 3,000 items, including books, films, journals, magazines etc. While there is a focus on contemporary arts publications, we also have a great selection of design, craft, fiction, non-fiction and history books among others. Our bibliography can be browsed online here.

Our team is working hard to improve how we share this material with creatives and researchers in Barbados. As practitioners ourselves, we know just how useful access to quality info about regional and international art worlds can be – whether for research, professional development or inspiration.

The aim of this open day is to create a space for dialogue; to not only run ideas we have had for the library by the public, but to really learn about the desires and needs of creative communities and find out if or how they can benefit from this resource.

Directions can be found on the ‘About Page‘ of our website. We hope to see you pass through to browse the collection and chat with us then!

 

Fresh Milk welcomes Kate Keohane to the platform

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Fresh Milk is pleased to welcome art historian & PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, Kate Keohane to the platform from August 28 – September 23, 2017.

Kate, whose research focuses on complicating the effect of globalisation in contemporary creative fields – particularly the way ‘paradises’ are framed in the cultural imaginary with reference to the use of the Caribbean landscape in global contemporary art – sees this residency as an opportunity to spend time in the region, getting a sense of one of the islands she is investigating and learning about the wider Caribbean. She will also be utilizing the collection in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room for research towards her thesis.

About Kate Keohane:

Kate Keohane is a PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. As part of an international EU-LAC project which studies community museums, her work considers the staging and circulation of the Caribbean landscape in contemporary art. Through the sustained analysis of artists working from outside and within the region, and the ideas of writers and theorists of the Caribbean, including Édouard Glissant, Derek Walcott, Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall, her thesis hopes to trouble the narrative surrounding conceptions of the ‘contemporary’ and the effects of globalisation on creative fields.