About us

‘Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean’ is a two-year international research project led by Dr Leon Wainwright (The Open University, UK), with Co-Investigator Professor Dr Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University), funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK), in partnership with the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Iniva, the Institute of International Visual Arts, London, and Rivington Place.

Committee members for the project include:
Dr Leon Wainwright (Principal Investigator, The Open University), Professor Dr Kitty Zijlmans (Co-Investigator, Leiden University), Dr Rosemarijn Höfte (KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden), Dr Wayne Modest (Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam), Tessa Jackson OBE (Iniva, Institute of International Visual Arts, London).

‘Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean’ is a Research Networking and Exchange Project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Project theme

Marlon Griffith 2012 ‘Kawa no ji’. Japanese washi, dimensions variable. Installed at Mino, Gifu, Japan. Image courtesy of the artist.

Issues of sustainable community have come to have a growing relevance across the English-Dutch linguistic divide in the Caribbean. Bridging the boundary between these typically separate contexts, this project combines the common interests of a range of academic and non-academic stakeholders in a set of collaborative activities.

Our approach is to establish how researchers, art practitioners, policymakers and curators of Caribbean art may contribute to building a sustainable community for the transnational and diasporic Caribbean.
The project traces the similarities and distinctions between Dutch and English-speaking contexts of the Caribbean and its global diaspora, in search of strategic ways to support its rich cultural heritage. It assesses how the Caribbean region has constituted global communities and how these may undergo a positive and dynamic transformation through focused activities of networking and exchange in the field of visual art.

The project continues to generate audio-visual material available through the Open Arts Archive and and has published a themed issue of the Open Arts Journal, subsequently developed into a book anthology with Manchester University Press.

Conference 1

Our first conference took place at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam on 5th and 6th February 2013.

Speakers included:

Petrina Dacres (Jamaica), Marlon Griffith (Japan/Trinidad), Rosemarijn Höfte (Netherlands), Tessa Jackson (UK), Erica James (US/Bahamas), Roshini Kempadoo (UK), Tirzo Martha (Curaçao), Wayne Modest (Netherlands), Nicholas Morris (Germany/Jamaica), Alex van Stipriaan (Netherlands), Leon Wainwright (UK) and Kitty Zijlmans (Netherlands).

View video footage of the conference on the Open Arts Archive Event page.

Download the final programme for Conference 1 (including abstracts and biographies of speakers) and the conference poster.

Conference 2

Our Second conference took place at the Institute for International Visual Arts (Iniva, London), 03-04 December 2013.

Speakers included:

Alessio Antoniolli (UK), Marielle Barrow (Trinidad), Charles Campbell (Jamaica/UK), Annalee Davis (Barbados), Joy Gregory (UK), Therese Hadchity (Barbados), Glenda Heyliger (Aruba), Rosemarijn Hoefte (Netherlands), Yudhishthir Raj Isar (France/India), Tessa Jackson (UK), Nancy Jouwe (Netherlands), Charl Landvreugd (Netherlands), Wayne Modest (Netherlands), Petrona Morrison (Jamaica), Jynell Osborne (Guyana), Marcel Pinas (Suriname), Dhiradj Ramsamoedj (Suriname), Leon Wainwright (UK), and Kitty Zijlmans (Netherlands)

View video footage of the conference on the Open Arts Archive Event page.

Download the final programme for Conference 2 and the conference poster.