Shaping Narratives: Information, Creativity, and the Custodians of Caribbean Memory
- Sherwood McCaskie
- May 4
- 14 min read
by Sherwood McCaskie
Conversation on Creativity, Publishing, and Librarianship
University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, April 11th , 2005.
Introduction: Intersections of Memory and Imagination
Colleagues, and fellow curators of knowledge and culture, I am pleased to be with you today as part of this conversation on Creativity, Publishing, and Librarianship, fields often seen as distinct but which, in truth, exist in a shared ecosystem of cultural expression, identity formation, and memory preservation. Today, I want to speak of the prevailing idea that archives, libraries, and creative spaces do not merely preserve the past—they actively produce meaning, shape identity, and expand the boundaries of possibility. We are not merely caretakers of knowledge, we are curators of imagination and architects of memory. This is a fundamental shift in how we understand our role as librarians, publishers, producers and scholars. The conventional view has too often cast archives and libraries as neutral repositories, places where information is stored and consulted. However, the truth is more dynamic. Every act of collection, every editorial decision, every cataloguing choice is a creative intervention. Every exhibit, publication, and performance is an invitation to reframe the past and imagine new futures.
We are not just holding on to stories, we are shaping the narrative contours of identity. When a librarian champions a book by a local author, when a publisher chooses to print in dialect, when a media producer remixes historical footage with new material, these are acts of cultural authorship. These are acts of resistance against forgetting, against homogenisation, against marginalisation. In the Caribbean, where history has been fragmented or silenced very often, the work we do in these spaces takes on even greater urgency. We are not just preserving heritage; we are actively constructing the future archive. Interestingly, that archive, if we are bold enough, will be one that is inclusive, imaginative, and empowering.
In this presentation, I will:
Share insights from my research on the role of information in postcolonial Barbados, particularly between 1958 and 1978—a period marked by transformation, turbulence, and imagination.
Reflect on the remarkable work of fellow presenters Tanya Batson-Savage, Daniel Francis, and Felene Cayetano, and how they brighten the dynamic interplay between creativity and information.
Offer a vision for a collaborative Caribbean information ecology in which librarians, archivists, media producers, publishers, and creatives may function as co-curators/producers and co-authors of our collective narrative.
This is a call for integration, not just of practices, but of principles. In a Caribbean still grappling with the layered legacies of colonialism, the swift tides of globalisation, and the uncharted terrain of digital memory, we must do more than collaborate—we must reimagine the ethical foundations of our memory work. This is not simply about putting librarians, archivists, and artists in the same room; it’s about aligning our values. It’s about asking:
What are we preserving?
For whom?
To what end?
How do we shape our stories?
Our stories cannot live in silos where the library speaks in one language, the archive in another, and the creative space in yet another still. We need a unified vision, one that centres community, justice, and imagination as core principles. In doing so, we resist the old hierarchies of knowledge that privileged the written over the spoken, the official over the intimate, the colonial over the communal. Integration, in this sense, is an act of liberation. It means embracing oral histories with the same reverence as government records. It means treating calypso, reggae, and spoken word as legitimate forms of historiography. It means allowing the digital to stretch our storytelling, not restrict it to algorithms and platforms.
As we rethink how we store, we must also rethink how we value. As we decide how to share, we must ask who has access, who is being left out, and how we redress that imbalance. And as we shape our stories—through books, databases, installations, and dreams—we must do so with the courage to disrupt, to include, and to innovate. This is a call to build something new—not on the ruins of what was, but on the radical possibilities of what can be when we work in alignment, not just in proximity.
Part I: Information as Power – Barbados, 1958–1978
Let me begin with the heart of my research: an interrogation of how information functioned in the first two decades surrounding Barbadian independence. The period from 1958 to 1978 was not merely a chapter in national development—it was a foundational moment in narrative construction.
It was a time when the West Indies Federation dissolved, (May 31, 1962), a time when Barbados asserted itself as a sovereign nation, (November 30th, 1966), and when the architecture of the postcolonial state was being designed. What role did information play during this time? Who controlled it? Who challenged it? Who was left out?
Through deep archival engagement and research, I encountered a range of material, including government memos, correspondence between civil servants, Cabinet papers, newspapers, TV and radio programmes and transcripts. These forms revealed that information in Barbados during this period was not passive. It was deeply political. Government agencies like the Government Information Service were tasked with shaping public perception. The National Library Service began expanding access but still inherited colonial models of information hierarchies. Newspapers such as the Barbados Advocate and later The Nation operated in a complex space: at times echoing state narratives, at other times functioning as platforms of dissent.
It became apparent that information was being contested, as it was used to construct citizenship, to promote nationalism, and sometimes to suppress alternative viewpoints. The struggle over who gets to shape the national story was embedded in the very structures of our libraries, our media, and our education system. However, the story doesn’t end there. Parallel to the official narrative was the emergence of community-based archives—folk histories, oral traditions, letters, pamphlets, creative writing, presentation at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA), and annual calypso Competitions. These challenged the state-centric versions of reality. It is at this point that Barbadians started to experience the flowering of a more pluralistic information landscape.
Part II: Custodians of the Story – The Creative Confluence
It is within this tension between information as control and information as liberation that the work of creatives like Tanya Batson-Savage, Daniel Francis, and Felene Cayetano becomes not only relevant but essential.
Let us begin with Tanya Batson-Savage, a formidable presence in the landscape of Caribbean storytelling and publishing. Through her dual role as a storyteller and the founder of Blue Banyan Books, Tanya engages in a project far more consequential than simply producing books—she is reimagining the Caribbean's narrative infrastructure. Her work is rooted in a deep and deliberate commitment to re-centering Caribbean experiences, particularly those of children and young people whose worlds are too often shaped by stories that come from elsewhere.
Blue Banyan Books does not simply disseminate children’s stories—it curates cultural memory. Each publication becomes a vessel through which identity, place, language, and imagination are preserved and projected. In Tanya’s hands, the act of storytelling takes on a civic quality. She understands that stories are more than entertainment or educational tools—they are the architecture through which communities envision, affirm, and sometimes even reassemble themselves. As she has said in interviews (such as this one), stories create the frameworks through which we come to know who we are, and how we belong. By prioritizing Caribbean narratives, Blue Banyan operates not merely as a publisher, but as an informal archive—a living repository of Caribbean voices, idioms, landscapes, and dreams. In many Caribbean nations where official archives are underfunded, incomplete, or shaped by colonial epistemologies, publishers like Tanya are stepping into the breach. They are performing vital memory work—collecting what might otherwise be forgotten, amplifying what has long been silenced, and affirming the right of Caribbean children to see themselves as central characters in their own stories.
Tanya’s publishing practice also subtly but powerfully resists the commodification and homogenization of Caribbean culture. Her work reveals how publishing, often viewed primarily through a commercial lens, can instead serve as a cultural mission. This mission is both restorative and generative: it repairs what has been damaged or neglected, while also planting new seeds for the future. In this way, Tanya Batson-Savage transforms publishing into a radical and tender act of care. Her narratives do not merely reflect the Caribbean—they shape it. They provide young readers with the imaginative tools to build a sense of identity that is confident, nuanced, and rooted. Blue Banyan, then, is not just a publishing house; it is a cultural institution—a quiet but powerful force ensuring that Caribbean stories continue to thrive, endure, and evolve.
Daniel Francis represents a vital and transformative node within the Caribbean’s rapidly evolving information ecosystem. As a writer and community builder, he operates across a spectrum of platforms—ranging from traditional print media to dynamic digital spaces like Instagram, and YouTube. This multi-platform engagement allows him to reach diverse audiences and tailor his message for maximum impact and accessibility. His portfolio career, a term that captures his simultaneous involvement in various forms of creative, intellectual, and social work, mirrors the layered and multifaceted nature of Caribbean identity itself. Francis embodies the hybridity that characterises the region's knowledge production, one that refuses to be confined to the academic ivory tower or the rigid boundaries of conventional publishing. Instead, he embraces the fluid interplay between storytelling, scholarship, activism, and popular culture.
Crucially, Daniel challenges the long-held paradigm that knowledge must be slow-moving, hierarchical, and mediated by gatekeepers. In contrast, his work reimagines knowledge as something urgent, decentralised, and inclusive. Through his use of social media, he demonstrates that being a custodian of knowledge today means more than just preserving or transmitting information. It means activating it, engaging with it in real time, and allowing it to evolve through conversation and community interaction.
His performative presence on platforms like YouTube reveals an emerging model of what Stuart Hall might have called a “popular intellectual”—someone who speaks from within the culture rather than from above it.
Daniel’s digital storytelling is participatory and dialogic: he doesn't just inform; he invites others into the narrative, co-creating meaning in the process. In this way, Francis’ work positions information not as static data but as a living, breathing entity—shaped by interaction, charged with emotion, and deeply embedded in the life of Caribbean people. He is not merely a gatekeeper of information; he is a catalyst, a cultural translator, and a builder of knowledge communities that are vibrant, relevant, and deeply rooted in the everyday realities of the region.
Felene Cayetano offers perhaps the most lyrical and evocative illustration of what can be described as the “creative librarian”—a figure who blurs the lines between archival stewardship, artistic expression, and cultural activism. In her, the roles of poet, photographer, and librarian are not separate pursuits but deeply intertwined aspects of a unified practice. Her work challenges narrow definitions of librarianship as merely custodial or administrative; instead, she reveals it as a profoundly imaginative and generative space.
Felene’s poetry and photography emerge not in spite of her librarianship but as organic extensions of it. They are tools through which she archives affect, memory, and ancestral presence—particularly those elements that often evade conventional cataloguing. She recognizes that memory is not always best preserved in written text. Sometimes it lives in image, in gesture, in rhythm, or in the breath of a poem. Her understanding of librarianship is expansive, one that includes the visual, the embodied, and the ephemeral as legitimate forms of knowledge.
Crucially, her Garifuna heritage is not simply the subject of her work; it is the method—a way of knowing, remembering, and creating. For Felene, heritage is performative and participatory. It informs how she organizes, retrieves, and presents information, and how she invites others to engage with cultural memory. Her creative output serves as an alternative archive—one that resists the silences and absences produced by colonial record-keeping and epistemic violence.
In this light, Felene Cayetano stands as a kind of poet-archivist, a memory worker whose tools are as much metaphoric and emotional as they are bibliographic. She reminds us that the act of remembering is itself a creative process—an imaginative reconstruction of what was, what might have been, and what must not be forgotten. In a region like the Caribbean, where histories have been interrupted, distorted, or erased, such work is not only poetic but deeply political.
The “creative librarian,” as embodied by Felene, is thus not just a steward of knowledge, but a re-weaver of cultural threads—equal parts scholar, artist, and seer. Her presence reorients our understanding of what it means to preserve memory, suggesting that the future of Caribbean librarianship may lie not in stricter categorisation, but in greater openness to the creative, the intuitive, and the ancestral. Through her, we see that the archive can also be a poem, and that poetry itself can be a form of preservation. You can explore more of her work and philosophy at https://www.felene.com/
The Historian in Motion, Crafting Living Archives Through Story, Sound, and Space
This writer’s work exemplifies the public memory-maker, a figure who moves fluidly between education, media, and cultural work to produce a layered and living archive of Caribbean life. His projects, spanning documentaries, television series, speeches, and community-based storytelling, transform traditional modes of historical narration into dynamic, participatory experiences. Whether he is curating a series on the Barbadian diaspora, presenting the botanical history of the island, or producing tributes to national icons like Dame Nita Barrow or the Most Honourable Elombe Mottley.
Sherwood’s work is deeply grounded in the belief that information should live in public, in community, and in conversation. What sets this work apart is not only the breadth of his subject matter, but the way in which it brings scholarship and cultural production into contact with everyday life. The documentaries are not simply records; they are interventions—into forgetting, into erasure, into silence. They animate archives, amplify voices, and reconnect audiences to histories that feel personal, not distant. In this sense, this writer not merely interpret the past; he activates it, staging it in such a way that viewers feel its relevance in the now. The writer’s projects often center those who have been left out of official narratives, the ordinary people whose experiences form the bedrock of national life.
His focus on intergenerational dialogue, oral storytelling, and place-based memory (evident in his walking tours and community features) underscores his commitment to grassroots information work.
Like Felene Cayetano, Sherwood recognises that memory is not always textual. It is embodied, emotional, rhythmic, and spatial, and like Daniel Francis, he understands that knowledge must be responsive and interactive, especially in a digital age. Perhaps most striking is Sherwood’s role in building what might be considered a distributed Caribbean archive, one that lives across platforms, among people, and within programmes.
In countries where official repositories are often under-resourced, his productions help fill critical gaps in national and regional memory-keeping. Through this work, Sherwood challenges conventional boundaries between archivist, educator, and artist. He is all three, and in doing so, he helps reimagine what cultural stewardship can look like in the 21st-century Caribbean: engaged, mobile, generous, and unafraid to blur the lines between information and imagination. Together, Tanya, Daniel, Felene, and this writer present a compelling model of what Caribbean memory work can be: plural, porous, and profoundly creative.
Part III: Librarianship Reimagined – Toward a Creative Information Ecology
So, where do we go from here?
My research into the post-independence information landscape of Barbados revealed a persistent issue, that of institutional siloing. Archives collected documents. Libraries circulated books. Publishers sold content. Creatives often worked on the margins, with little institutional support. Mindful of that, let us now reimagine this ecology. What if librarians and archivists were trained in creative writing? What if publishers collaborated with historians and archaeologists? What if archivists documented the present with the same urgency as the past? Such a vision is not only possible—it is absolutely necessary, as we are living in a time of information fragility. Climate change threatens physical archives. Misinformation distorts history. Generational shifts in media consumption mean that traditional repositories may soon become obsolete unless we adapt.
A creative information ecology would be:
Collaborative, involving cross-sectoral partnerships.
Inclusive, valuing both formal and informal knowledge.
Decolonial, centering indigenous and Afro-Caribbean epistemologies.
Dynamic, open to digital experimentation and new media.
We must train a new generation of knowledge workers who are not afraid to blur boundaries. The librarians and archivists who also write poetry, and produce radio and television series, that are also uploaded to social media channels to be consumed by wider audiences. The publisher who collects primary source oral histories, and make it available through publications. The artists who build digital archives. This is not a utopian dream—it is already happening. It is happening in Tanya’s editorial choices. In Daniel’s social media posts about Caribbean literature. In Felene’s poetic documentation of Belizean life, and in my audiovisual productions, and distribution. Our task now is to scale these practices, institutionalise them, and build a supportive framework that makes hybrid work not the exception, but the norm.
Part IV: Proposals for Practice
Let me offer four practical proposals that might help operationalise this vision:
Cross-Institutional Publishing Projects Imagine a collaboration between national libraries, archives, audiovisual centres, media producers and regional publishers to produce anthologies, graphic novels, AV presentations or zines. These could include work from emerging writers, and media producers, and be distributed through schools and community centres. Such projects could function both as cultural products and as archival artefacts.
Embedded Creatives in Libraries and Archives We need artists-in-residence not only in museums but in libraries and archives. These creatives can animate historical collections, produce public engagement content, and bridge the gap between the formal archive and the living community.
Decentralised Digital Memory Platforms Drawing inspiration from Daniel’s multi-platform engagement, we can create participatory digital spaces for storytelling. These platforms would allow users to upload photos, record oral histories, or annotate historical documents. Such an approach might be regarded as the Caribbean’s Wikipedia-Meets-Instagram for cultural memory.
Training Programmes for Hybrid Practitioners Institutions like the UWI can lead the way in developing interdisciplinary certificates or degrees in creative information work. The curriculum would cover archival theory, digital humanities, publishing, and creative writing, preparing graduates for a more fluid professional world.
Conclusion: Toward a Story-Savvy Future
Let me return to the central insight of my research, that idea that information is not just a record of what happened, but a medium through which we imagine who we might become. In the Caribbean, where the legacies of colonial erasure remain vivid, the act of remembering is radical. However, remembering alone is not enough. We must also reimagine, and this is the work of creativity. Librarians, archivists, media producers, publishers, and creatives, each hold a piece of the puzzle. Together, we can build a story-savvy region that knows itself, values itself, and continues to shape itself. Therefore, whether you are in a library in St. Lucia, a publishing house in Jamaica, a digital archive in Belize, a media house in St Vincent and the Grenadines, or simply under a mango tree sharing stories with your grandchildren, you are a part of the Caribbean’s memory infrastructure. Equally important, the stories you choose to tell, or not tell, will shape our collective future. Thank you Tanya, Daniel, and Felene, not only for your work, but for showing us what is possible. May we continue to collaborate and shape narratives.
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