Marina Salandy-Brown

Marina Salandy-Brown FRSA, Hon. FRSL, is a Trinidadian journalist, broadcaster and cultural activist. She was formerly an editor and Senior Manager in Radio and News and Current Affairs programmes with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London,[1] one of the BBC's few top executives from an ethnic minority background.[2] She is the founder and inaugural director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest,[3][4] held annually in Trinidad and Tobago since 2011, "the biggest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean",[5][6] and of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.[7][8] She was also co-founder of the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize.[9][10]

Marina Salandy-Brown

FRSA, Hon. FRSL
Salandy-Brown presents the 2019 Henry Swanzy Award to Ian Randle at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest
Born
Marina Salandy

Diego Martin, Trinidad
Occupation(s)Journalist, broadcaster and cultural activist
Known forFounder of NGC Bocas Lit Fest
AwardsHummingbird Medal (silver)

In 2020, Salandy-Brown received the Ferdinand Magellan Award from Chile, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the United Kingdom's Royal Society of Literature.[11][12] In 2022, she received the Hummingbird Silver Medal at the National Awards ceremony in Port of Spain, Trinidad.[13]

Biography

She was born Marina Salandy in Diego Martin, Trinidad, and has said: "[A]ll Salandys apparently started there, but I come from everywhere in Trinidad. Although I was a town girl, my father ran government experimental (agricultural) stations and we were lucky enough to also live all over rural Trinidad. I lived in Maracas, St Joseph, when you had to go down into the river five times before getting to our house at the end of the road. When we lived in Matelot, the road wasn't properly paved."[14] She attended the government secondary school in Diego Martin.[15]

Career in Britain

At the age of 17, Salandy-Brown left Trinidad and migrated to Britain to attend university.[15] In London, she began her working life in publishing as an editor with the Melrose Press,[16] after which she was for more than 20 years an editor and senior manager in BBC Radio and News and Current Affairs programmes.[17]

Among the BBC radio programmes she produced was BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, presented by Melvyn Bragg. Bragg recalled the beginning of their successful long-term collaboration: "I met this producer Marina Salandy-Brown and neither she nor I wanted to go on doing the same Start the Week. I remember we had lunch together – and I said, 'Well, if I'm going to go on I want to do this sort of stuff,' And she said, 'So do I' – or she said it first and I agreed…. And then we just conscientiously, steadily put that into operation and changed the programme."[18] In the new styling of the programme, "The producer, Marina Salandy-Brown, and I introduced scientists, historians and philosophers on to that Monday morning slot, and changed the nature of the programme. A change which I am glad that my successor Jeremy Paxman and his successor Andrew Marr have kept."[19]

Other programmes Salandy-Brown produced for BBC Radio 4 included the series Work Talk (1991–92), presented by Ferdinand Dennis,[20] and Book at Bedtime, a 1993 edition featuring Lawrence Scott's novel Witchbroom, abridged by Margaret Busby.[21]

In the early 1980s, Salandy-Brown was involved with the Black Media Workers' Association (BMWA), a pressure group for better training and employment opportunities for black workers in the mainstream press and broadcasting, and in 1982 she conducted research that was the basis for the BMWA report Black Workers in the Media.[22][23]

As Home Editor of BBC Radio 5 Live, Salandy-Brown was concerned with implementing a diversity policy,[24] arguing in 2002 that "there is no point having diverse people if you don’t allow them to be diverse".[25] She explained the context:

"When I joined the BBC in 1984 there were no people of colour working in radio production in the four national domestic services, except one producer from India.... On BBC TV there was one Caribbean woman news presenter, Moira Stuart.... I was determined not to be the first and last Caribbean person to be a BBC radio producer. I immediately started making programmes about people whose voices were never heard by the British public. I made programmes that promoted Caribbean and developing country cultures, politics and people.... The programmes won prizes and proved that there was a world of stories out there to be told and that all people could be included in the BBC without outraging the British public. They just had to be the very best in quality. I was able to recruit researchers and producers of non-European origin to my production teams.... I also introduced new non-European presenters and subjects to the airwaves.[26] My success paved the way for others to follow as staff members and as presenters....And, even when the argument was won over hiring a work force that represented the population, myopic editors would often pigeon-hole non-white producers and presenters."[27]

Salandy-Brown was a governor of the University of Westminster,[1] a member of the Arts Council Literature panel, and a former trustee of the Koestler Awards to support and fund Arts in prisons in the UK. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).[16][28]

Return to Trinidad

Returning to Trinidad in 2004 to be with her mother,[14] Salandy-Brown has since 2005 contributed a weekly commentary column to the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.[29] She is a consultant to the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company and was formerly Executive Director of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.[30][31] She also works across the Caribbean as a media consultant.[16]

Bocas Lit Fest
Main article: NGC Bocas Lit Fest

Salandy-Brown has spoken of her realisation after returning to Trinidad that locally "[t]here was no place for people who read to get together, in a forum to talk about books and there were so many Caribbean writers abroad who had not been to other islands — something was missing."[32] As she stated in 2011: "In Britain there are a hundred and how many literary festivals. Little Dominica, which is so poor and so tiny, has a literary festival. Jamaica had one for 10 years, the Calabash. I think Antigua has one. Why didn't we have one, when we've produced so many great writers? Sam Selvon and these people really made an impact on the world stage. Earl Lovelace is treasured, but not treasured enough, because we don't have prizes. There's been no accolade of Earl's writing since the 1970s. It's important to reward creative effort! We created a literary festival but we also created an international prize for Caribbean writing."[14]

So, working with a group of like-minded people – including Nicholas Laughlin, Funso Aiyejina, Marjorie Thorpe and Jeremy Taylor – Salandy-Brown launched the Bocas Lit Fest in April 2011, together with the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.[33]

The Bocas Lit Fest celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2020 with a virtual festival, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.[34][35]

In January 2022, Salandy-Brown announced that she was "passing on the baton" to Nicholas Laughlin to serve in the roles of festival and programme director, while she remains as president of Bocas.[36][37][38][39]

Writing

As well her weekly column in Newsday, Salandy-Brown has written reviews, articles and essays for other publications both in the Caribbean region and internationally, including Caribbean Beat,[40] The Independent,[41][42] and elsewhere.

She was a contributor to the book Caribbean Dispatches: Beyond the Tourist Dream (2006), compiled and edited by Jane Bryce,[43] and, more recently, to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[44][45]

Awards and recognition

In 1988, Salandy-Brown won the Sony Silver Award for Most Creative Use of Radio, and 1994 she was named Radio Journalist of the Year.[32] She also won Programme of the Year, UK Television and Radio Industries Club, in 1990,[27] and a Sony Gold Award, Best News Programme in 2000 for BBC Radio.[32]

In 1992, she won the New York Festivals Award, Silver.[27]

In 2005, she was awarded an honorary doctorate (DLitt) by the University of Westminster.[46][47]

In 2012, she was recognised by for her achievements in the Arts in the UK during the last 50 years with an award at the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Jubilee celebrations.[48]

In 2013, she was among six persons to be conferred with honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies at St Augustine,[16][49][50] when in October the Chancellor George A. O. Alleyne presented her with the Doctor of Letters (DLitt), Honoris Causa of UWI.[51]

In October 2020, an award was conferred on Salandy-Brown marking the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the world, in recognition of her work founding the Bocas Lit Fest, promoting art and literature throughout the Caribbean, and exploring other cultures.[52] The inaugural Strait of Magellan Award was presented to her at the Bocas Lit Fest headquarters, Alcazar Street, Port of Spain, on 30 November by Ambassador of Chile Juan Aníbal Barría,[53] who called Salandy-Brown "an explorer like Magellan, who, thanks to her discipline, work and innovation, has managed to build an educational space that crosses the frontiers of knowledge and contributes to the dissemination of the rich Caribbean culture."[54]

Salandy-Brown was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) in 2020, the 200th anniversary of the RSL's founding.[11][54]

Alongside the Bocas Lit Fest that she founded, Salandy-Brown was celebrated by the International Women's Forum (IWF) in the "Ideas Remaking the World" segment of IWF's World Leadership Conference in November 2021.[55]

In September 2022, she received the Trinidad national award of the Hummingbird Medal (Silver).[56][57]

References
  1. Court of Governors, University of Westminster.
  2. Tessa Blackstone, Bhikhu Parekh, Peter Sanders (eds), Race Relations in Britain: A Developing Agenda, Routledge, 1998.
  3. Maya Jaggi, "A homecoming", Financial Times, 27 May 2011.
  4. The NGC Bocas Lit Fest – The Trinidad and Tobago Literary Festival.
  5. "NGC Bocas Lit Fest Debate on TV6 today". Archived 28 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Trinidad Express Newspapers, 22 April 2012.
  6. Carolyn Cooper, "T&T Lit Fest Puts Us to Shame", Jamaica Gleaner, 8 May 2011.
  7. "New Annual Prize For Caribbean Literature To Be Launched" Archived 3 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Book2Book, 23 November 2010.
  8. "Entries open for 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean" Archived 3 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Trinidad Express Newspapers, 15 September 2011.
  9. Marina Salandy-Brown biography, Conference Programme, June 2012, p. 12, The Literary Consultancy.
  10. "Announcing the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize", Bocas News, 1 May 2012, NGC Bocas Lit Fest 2012.
  11. "Marina Salandy-Brown Hon FRSL". Royal Society of Literature. 29 November 2020 – via YouTube.
  12. Kim Boodram (1 December 2020). "Lit Fest founder lands 2 International awards". Trinidad Express.
  13. Janelle De Souza (25 September 2022). "Rondon, Salandy-Brown, Hosein humbled by awards". Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
  14. B. C. Pires, "A Trini literary festival", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 1 May 2011.
  15. "A Trini Lit Fest" Archived 7 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine, BCRaw.com.
  16. "UWI St Augustine Campus names six Honorary Graduands", UWI Campus News, 11 June 2013.
  17. Dennis Conway, “The Return of Youthful Trinidadian Transnational Professionals: Their Potential as a ‘Brain Gain’?”, Conference on "Trans-Atlantic Perspectives on International Migration: Cross Border Impacts, Border Security, and Socio-Political Responses", 5 March 2010.
  18. Simon Elmes, And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World's Best Radio Station, Random House Books, 2007, pp.72–3.
  19. Melvyn Bragg (ed.), "Introduction", In Our Time: A Companion to the Radio 4 Series, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009.
  20. "Work Talk", Radio Listings.
  21. "A Book at Bedtime: Witchbroom" Radio Times, Issue 3624, 17 June 1993, p. 125.
  22. Lionel Morrison (March 2007). "8: Training and Employment". A Century of Black Journalism in Britain: A Kaleidoscopic View of Race and the Media (1893–2003). p. 57.
  23. Salandy-Brown, Marina (ed), Black Media Workers' Register, 1983.
  24. "Case study: Monitoring Radio Five Live", BBC Diversity booklet, 16 May 2002, p. 6.
  25. Joy Francis, "BBC still showing its 'hideously white' face”, The Guardian (London), 13 May 2002.
  26. Akbar S. Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise, Routledge, 1992, p. 1952.
  27. "Start Me Up – Honorary Graduand Marina Salandy-Brown", UWI Today, August 2013.
  28. "Sarah's Backchat from the Bocas Litfest", 6 June 2013.
  29. See, for instance, Marina Salandy-Brown, "Infinite possibilities", Newsday, Thursday, 14 June 2012.
  30. "Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival 2009 - interview with Marina Salandy Brown, Maria Govan Filmmaker". YouTube.
  31. "Minister of Trade and Industry to attend gala opening of TT Film Festival", Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
  32. Essiba Small, "Marina Salandy-Brown - Bringing readers & writers together", Trinidad Express Newspapers, 15 March 2013. Archived 20 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
  33. A. J. Theolade, "Bocas Lit Fest continues to blossom", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 23 April 2014.
  34. Debra Greaves, "Ten years on the Bocas Lit Fest", Newsday, 25 March 2020.
  35. Julien Neaves, "Bocas 2020: Challenges, benefits of a virtual literary festival", Newsday, 18 September 2020.
  36. "Nicholas Laughlin", International Literature Showcase.
  37. "Bocas prepares for decade two". Bocas Lit Fest. 7 January 2022. Retrieved 8 October 2023.
  38. Michael Mondezie (8 January 2022). "Turning to a new chapter". Trinidad Express.
  39. "Our Team". bocaslitfest.com. Retrieved 8 October 2023.
  40. Marina Salandy-Brown at Caribbean Beat.
  41. Marina Salandy-Brown, "'Was strange, our sweat mixed'", The Independent, 15 September 1998.
  42. Marina Salandy Brown, "Travel: World: A cabana short of a Crusoe", The Independent, 13 March 1999.
  43. Marina Salandy-Brown, "Put me down whey yuh pick me up", in Jane Bryce (ed.), Caribbean Dispatches: Beyond the Tourist Dream, Macmillan Caribbean, 2006, p. 201.
  44. Marina Salandy-Brown biography, Bocas Lit Fest.
  45. "Of Africa and of India", Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, 13 April 2019.
  46. "University news". The Times. 27 December 2005.
  47. "Honorary awards 1992–2009". University of Westminster.
  48. "T&T nationals get awards in UK", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 7 October 2012.
  49. "Six Receive Honorary Doctorates From UWI" Archived 27 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Trinidad Express Newspapers, 15 June 2013.
  50. "Ex-bishop to get UWI doctorate", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 14 June 2013.
  51. Shaliza Hassanali, "Salandy-Brown tells UWI graduands: After hubris comes the fall", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian Media, 27 October 2013.
  52. "Premio 500 años del estrecho de Magallanes en Trinidad y Tobago", La Prensa Austral (in Spanish), 29 October 2020.
  53. Greaves, Debra (4 December 2020). "Bocas Lit Fest founder receives Chilean award". Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
  54. Janine Mendes-Franco, "'Godmother' of Caribbean literature, Marina Salandy-Brown, made honorary fellow of Royal Society of Literature", Global Voices, 5 December 2020.
  55. "Bocas Lit Fest honoured by IWF". Trinidad & Tobago Guardian. 6 November 2021. Retrieved 7 November 2021.
  56. Camille Moreno (24 September 2022). "Order of the Republic awards for CMO Parasram, banker Prof Sterling Frost". Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
  57. "National Awards 2022". Trinidad Express. 24 September 2022.
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