Sustainable Art Communities: Contemporary Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean

The Caribbean, with its transnational diaspora stretching to all the shores of the Atlantic and beyond, is one of the liveliest cultural landscapes in the world today. It is also one of the most troubled. This volume presents contemporary perspectives on the challenges facing Caribbean communities. It shows how the arts can play a crucial role in improving sustainability by creating a shared ground of experience, enjoyment and understanding. The book promotes the view that visual art in particular has an important contribution to make in enhancing the Caribbean's networks and reflecting on the nature of its connections. It addresses a topic that spans the scholarly, artistic, curatorial and professional fields of art and heritage, exploring constructive comparisons between key linguistic regions - namely the Anglophone and the Dutch - and identifying new parallels and contrasts in global-local relations, capital, patronage, morality, sustainability and the benefits of knowledge exchange. Ultimately, it makes the case for social justice in the arts within a complex and little-studied global geography. Based on a major international project funded by research councils and arts organisations in Europe, Sustainable art communities is a milestone in the collaboration between artists, policymakers, arts organisers, art historians and critics. It draws from such diverse settings as Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, Suriname, Curaçao, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States.