Guyana Speaks

Guyana SPEAKS wishes you a very Happy Independence Day!

Voices in Slavery’s Archive — Guyana Workshops (9–11 June 2-26)

You are warmly invited to take part in the Voices in Slavery’s Archive workshops taking place in Georgetown, Berbice, and Essequibo from 9–11 June.

This three‑year collaboration works to make the testimonies of enslaved people recorded in the nineteenth‑century Reports of the Protector of Slaves accessible to all Guyanese communities.

As the project notes, it “aims to ensure these sensitive records are handled with dignity, care, and cultural responsibility” and to explore how they may help reconnect communities with their ancestral histories.

Each workshop introduces the Slave Registers (1817–1834) and selected Protector of Slaves testimonies (1820-1834), with space for discussion, reflection, and community guidance. Your insights, lived experience, and family or community knowledge are vital to shaping how these archives are interpreted and shared.

All timings below are 'draft' but provide a rough indication of when the workshop is likely to be held.

📍 GEORGETOWN
Tuesday 9 June

• 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM — Walter Rodney National Archives (Opening Ceremony + Workshop)

• 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM — Moray House

📍 BERBICE
Wednesday 10 June

• 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM or 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM - New Amsterdam Town Hall

📍 ESSEQUIBO
Thursday 11 June
• 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM or 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM or 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (TBC) - Anna Regina Regional Educational Board, Office Board Room
👉 To attend, please RSVP to [email protected]

Include your name, location, and which session you’d like to join.

SAVE THE DATE: Sunday, 10th May at 12 noon

OMG, Auntie Joyce Trotman, who is 98, has found fame! This morning she phoned, excitement in her voice. 'Gyurl', she said, 'The last days of my life are so exciting, I can't believe it! So eventful.' She went on to say that she had been invited by the BBC Radio 3 to appear on a programme called 'Private Passions'; an opportunity to share her knowledge and love of classical music. She accepted the invite on the understanding that they would also share one of her favourite Guyanese folk songs. She ended the call with a quote from a book she'd been reading (Friendship, 2018): 'If I must be old then let it be for a purpose and let that purpose be encouraging the future.' 'This', she then said, 'is what Guyana SPEAKS did for me. It brought me out of my shell in my old age.' Well if you could see the beam on my face!
The programme will be aired this coming Sunday, 10th May at 12 noon (British Summer Time). I hope many of you will find the time to listen to her memories of life growing up in Guyana and the classic music education many of her generation received.

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Joyce Trotman, teacher and writer Michael Berkeley's guest is 98 year old teacher and writer Joyce Trotman.

Colin Babb writes: "I attended an excellent launch event – From Pitch to Pour: Guyanese Cricket and Rum – organised by Guyana SPEAKS (UK). To celebrate the publication of Professor Clem Seecharan’s Hand in Hand: History of Cricket in Guyana, 1915 to 1923 (Volume 3): No Silver Lining Yet, published by Hansib publications, and John Mair’s On the Road to El Dorado – The History of Rum in Guyana. The event was held at Longfield Hall, London, SE5."

https://colinbabbauthor.com/news/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRUm-xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeapzMrw0Ivofs5EvIaH2o9IxqZRXeqrbgPG8MFZuN_uEva50LsPBXMdWu26c_aem_pRI1hzsExPJNUh4f0HqAog

News - Colin Babb News updates about Colin Babb, 1973 and Me and more.

Yvonne Singh was interviewed by Juanita Cox at a Guyana SPEAKS event in February 2026. You can listen to an audio recording of their conversation here.

Please excuse the short period of noise interference at the beginning of the recording.

Juanita Cox 1 like. "Sat, Feb, 2026: Juanita Cox interviews Yvonne Singh about her book, INK! for Guyana SPEAKS."

If you are in the UK:

Dr. Bob Ramdhanie MBE, Co-Founder & Director, Rupununi Music & Arts Festival (Guyana) will be launching his new book, The Black Dance Movement in England 1940-2000, at the Moonshot Centre in New Cross on Thursday, 23 April 2026 at 7pm.

All are welcome.

Guyana SPEAKS loves hearing stories of Guyanese success. If you have any you want to share with me, don't hold back and please use this thread.

Today, I had the great pleasure of e-meeting the award-winning artist and film maker, Karen Chapman and hope that she can be persuaded to contribute to a future Guyana SPEAKS event.

For those who don't know, Karen is an award-winning Guyanese-Canadian filmmaker, director, producer known for her compassionate, documentary-style storytelling focused on community, resilience, and trauma. She is best known for her 2024 debut feature film Village Keeper, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and for her work on Black Life: Untold Stories.

In the recording below you can hear Karen Chapmen in conversation with the Canadian Film Centre. She talks about her multifaceted career and her journey as a storyteller.

CFC Conversation with Karen Chapman | December 2024 An Evening with Karen Chapman: Storytelling Across BoundariesJoin us for an inspiring conversation with Karen Chapman, an award-winning artist and filmmaker ...

Free Exhibition - Donald Locke: Resistant Forms
Date: 10 April - 30 August 2026
Open: Tuesday-Sunday: 11am-6pm
Venue: Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG

London’s first comprehensive survey of Guyanese-British ceramicist, painter and sculptor Donald Locke. A post-war artist of the Windrush Generation, Donald Locke (1930-2010) played a pivotal role in 20th century British sculpture. This exhibition, presenting over 80 works across five decades, offers a long-overdue exploration of the artist, whose significance has gone under-recognised in the UK.

Always experimenting, Locke’s practice is characterised by his evolving approach to different media and his formal ingenuity, alongside a constant exploration of history, identity and subjugation. Resistant Forms charts this evolution of Locke’s work across his life as he moved between homes in Guyana, the UK and the United States – influenced by the people and places he encountered along the way.

Commencing with his early ceramics works, evocative of human and natural forms, the exhibition traces the artist’s move to mixed-media sculpture and the monochromatic black paintings from his Plantation Series in the 1970s. Also presented are his large-scale paintings from the 90s, which continued Locke’s assemblage practice, through their incorporation of found images and ceramic, metal and wood. The final section of the show presents a selection of experimental works made by Locke during the final years of his life in Atlanta – mixing memory and mythologies, which were deeply influenced by the vibrant art scene and assemblage traditions of the American South.

A singularly prolific and heterodox artist, this exhibition represents the most comprehensive survey to date of the range of materials and styles adopted by Donald Locke across his life, reflecting his unwavering pursuit to give form and visibility to the “unique and hybrid contributions of Black culture to modernity.”

Donald Locke: Resistant Forms London’s first comprehensive survey of Guyanese-British ceramicist, painter and sculptor Donald Locke.A post-war artist of the Windrush Generation, Donald Locke

“THE SPIRIT OF KOFI TELLS HIS-STORY” is an account by an ‘invoked’ Kofi (Cuffy), National Hero of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, of his Revolution against the enslavers in the Dutch colony of Berbice, Guyana, in February 1763.

Kofi tells of his rising up out of African enslavement to become Headman of the African people, his formation of an army, the waging of war, the expulsion of the Dutch from most of the Berbice plantations, and his term of rule as Governor of the Independent government of African people, during the Revolution which lasted approximately 10 months.

This was the FIRST Revolution of its kind in the Americas, and preceded the American War of Independence and the Haiti Revolution. The 1763 Monument in the Square of the Revolution in Georgetown, Guyana, depicts Kofi, Atta, Akara, Accabre and other Africans who led the Berbician Revolution.

The Spirit Of Kofi - A Tribute By Colin Bobb Semple A Special Tribute By Colin Bobb Semple(The Spirit Of Kofi Tells His - History )