IRA MATH­UR

This week the Sun­day Guardian fea­tures aca­d­e­m­ic, re­view­er, and artist Dr Hol­ly Eva Ryan. Of mixed Caribbean (Guyanese) and Irish her­itage, Dr Ryan, a read­er (As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor) in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don is drawn to projects that “dis­rupt po­lit­i­cal or­ders and build kinder worlds.”

A found­ing mem­ber of the Artis­tic Ac­tivism Re­search Co-Lab (AARC), Dr Ryan’s re­search, art, and writ­ing cen­tre around “col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, po­lit­i­cal emo­tions, sol­i­dar­i­ty pol­i­tics, and miss­ing nar­ra­tives in in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.”

In­trigued by the glob­al criss-cross­ing con­nec­tions be­tween peo­ple and cities in an in­creas­ing­ly di­vid­ed world, in Feb­ru­ary 2023, Dr Ryan co-pro­duced, con­tributed to and cu­rat­ed a mixed me­dia ex­hi­bi­tion held at the Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty in Lon­don. Us­ing the twin­ning ex­am­ples be­tween Speight­stown in Bar­ba­dos and Read­ing in the UK dur­ing the Win­drush years, the mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ex­hi­bi­tion in­clud­ed Dr Ryan’s art along­side work she co-pro­duced with Minute Works De­sign.

In this ex­hi­bi­tion, Dr Ryan says, “in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal con­stel­la­tions of friends came to­geth­er to press for so­cial change” for a more eq­ui­table, peace­ful and con­nect­ed world. The fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion of the ex­hi­bi­tion by Dr Ryan de­scribes the con­cept of the ex­hi­bi­tion twin­ning in full.

“Art across con­ti­nents helps us en­vi­sion al­ter­na­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties for col­lec­tive fu­tures and ways of do­ing pol­i­tics.

Genre-bust­ing cre­atives car­ry us to oth­er worlds. I am in­spired by peo­ple who have worked across gen­res, dis­ci­plines, ter­ri­to­ries and cre­ative medi­ums to ex­plore the depths and com­plex­i­ty of the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, such as Fri­da Kahlo, Ina Cé­saire, Glo­ria An­zaldúa, Khal Torab­ul­ly, and Bell Hooks.

I like to work be­tween medi­ums be­cause the writ­ten word and the vi­su­al al­low us to ex­press our­selves dif­fer­ent­ly and make dis­tinct and dif­fer­ent kinds of im­pres­sions. Aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing has a par­tic­u­lar form: it is a method of ar­gu­men­ta­tion de­signed to lead the read­er to buy in­to a spe­cif­ic claim or truth. While art can take that sort of uni­fy­ing or di­dac­tic form, it can al­so op­er­ate to con­found truth or to hold many truths all at once.

Am­bi­gu­i­ty, dis­agree­ment, un­cer­tain­ty—messi­ness! It is a part of life and, there­fore, a part of pol­i­tics. Mak­ing art en­ables me to cap­ture that messi­ness bet­ter than the writ­ten word. I de­cid­ed to share art from LINES be­cause the ex­hi­bi­tion is an apt il­lus­tra­tion of how I work with words, draw­ing and cu­ra­tion.

Twin­ning de­scribes the prac­tice of link­ing two or more com­mu­ni­ties. These com­mu­ni­ties are of­ten lo­cat­ed in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, con­nect­ing groups of peo­ple be­low and be­yond the na­tion-state lev­el, and are fre­quent­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the post-war peace­build­ing project.

From 1950, lo­cal may­ors and na­tion­al of­fi­cials in Eu­rope col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate cul­tur­al con­nec­tions be­tween towns torn apart dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Many of these con­nec­tions still ex­ist to­day, and they have long act­ed as con­duits for ex­chang­ing peo­ple, goods, and ideas. Aca­d­e­mics, jour­nal­ists, and lit­er­ary fig­ures have sur­veyed the in­tra-Eu­ro­pean town twin­ning project.

How­ev­er, far less at­ten­tion has been giv­en to twin­ning be­yond Eu­rope and how the prac­tice has opened to agen­das be­yond cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy and peace­build­ing in the past 50 years.

Some of these new­er twin­ning re­la­tion­ships have been straight­for­ward­ly in­stru­men­tal and premised on the pos­si­bil­i­ties for court­ing busi­ness and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties from abroad; oth­ers have ex­hib­it­ed a more com­plex meld of emo­tion­al in­ten­si­ty, moral com­pul­sion and po­lit­i­cal zeal.

Di­as­poric com­mu­ni­ties have es­tab­lished twin links to re­con­nect across ge­o­graph­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and gen­er­a­tional dis­tances. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween Speight­stown in Bar­ba­dos and Read­ing in the UK can be un­der­stood in this light.

The seeds of this con­nec­tion were sown at the end of the Sec­ond World War when Britain emerged with a much-weak­ened econ­o­my and mas­sive gaps in es­sen­tial ser­vices. The Labour gov­ern­ment of the time re­solved to stim­u­late growth with sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture and pub­lic health.

In this con­text, thou­sands of British Sub­jects from the Caribbean re­spond­ed to calls for agri­cul­tur­al and con­struc­tion work­ers, train and bus dri­vers, nurs­es and car­ers to help staff the new­ly found­ed Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice (NHS).

Peo­ple ar­riv­ing from Caribbean coun­tries be­tween 1948 and 1971 to as­sume these roles have since ac­quired the “Gen­er­a­tion Win­drush” la­bel. This refers to the MV Em­pire Win­drush, one of the first ships trans­port­ing work­ers from Ja­maica, Trinidad, Guyana and oth­er for­mer British ter­ri­to­ries to The British Isles. Al­though they had ar­rived at the Gov­ern­ment’s be­hest, these cit­i­zens from the wider British Em­pire were not al­ways met with a warm re­cep­tion.

On ar­rival, they en­coun­tered var­ied forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, rang­ing from di­vi­sive po­lit­i­cal dis­course and dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing hous­ing to more di­rect forms of ver­bal and phys­i­cal abuse.

In time, many es­tab­lished vol­un­tary net­works to help one an­oth­er nav­i­gate the un­ex­pect­ed com­plex­i­ties and chal­lenges of “ar­rival.”

Over time, these in­for­mal net­works ex­pand­ed in theme and scope, con­nect­ing new gen­er­a­tions born in the British Isles to the cul­tures and his­to­ries they would not learn about at school.

Among the “Win­drush” mi­grants were many Bar­ba­di­ans who had ar­rived by sea or air to take up new roles far from home. In­ter­est­ing­ly, many Bar­ba­di­ans set­tled in Read­ing, where they helped re­build the town’s vi­tal in­fra­struc­ture and lo­cal econ­o­my. Many took up jobs work­ing in fac­to­ries be­long­ing to ma­jor British brands like Hunt­ley & Palmers and Burber­ry.

In 1968, just a cou­ple of years af­ter Bar­ba­dos gained in­de­pen­dence, a small group of Read­ing-based Bar­ba­di­ans de­cid­ed to meet for reg­u­lar meet­ings to share and build up­on their cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences and dis­cuss cur­rent af­fairs at home. This was the be­gin­ning of the Bar­ba­dos and Friends As­so­ci­a­tion (BAFA), which, over many decades, cul­ti­vat­ed eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al ties to com­mu­ni­ties back in Bar­ba­dos.

BAFA or­gan­is­es an­nu­al events in Read­ing to co­in­cide with Crop Over (Car­ni­val) and the Bar­ba­di­an In­de­pen­dence Day. In 2003, BAFA’s long-stand­ing tie with Speight­stown was con­sol­i­dat­ed with a for­mal twin­ning agree­ment. This act sym­bol­ised the cru­cial role that Bar­ba­di­ans had played in the de­vel­op­ment and re­gen­er­a­tion of Read­ing. It al­so sit­u­at­ed the re­la­tion­ship as one of sev­er­al ex­am­ples that con­nect the prac­tice of twin­ning with broad­er po­lit­i­cal projects to ho­n­our Britain’s mi­grant and di­as­poric com­mu­ni­ties and to flesh out what it means to say, ‘We are here be­cause you were there.’”

Dr Ryan’s book—Po­lit­i­cal Street Art: Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Cul­ture and Re­sis­tance in Latin Amer­i­ca—ex­am­ined the re­la­tion­ship be­tween street art and so­cial change in Bo­livia, Brazil and Ar­genti­na as co-di­rec­tor of CRo­LAC (the Cen­tre for Re­search on Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean), a hub es­tab­lished to con­nect schol­ars with­in and be­yond Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty.

Dr Ryans’s book on “friend­ship and glob­al pol­i­tics” will be pub­lished by Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty Press in 2025.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian

Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the

win­ner of the 2023 NGC Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Web­site: www.iras­room.org

In­quiries by au­thors can be sent to iras­room@gmail.com di­rect­ed to iras­room@gmail.com