Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian colum­nist At­til­lah Springer has been com­mis­sioned by the Africa Cen­tre in Lon­don to cu­rate a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary pro­duc­tion called Free Yuh­self, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of T&T's 50th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence. Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni in­ter­viewed her on the pro­duc­tion by email.

Q: What's the project about?

A: Free Yuh­self start­ed off as an event to mark T&T's 50th In­de­pen­dence. I want­ed to do some­thing that was po­lit­i­cal but non-par­ti­san, cel­e­bra­to­ry but not fluffy, en­joy­able and at the same time thought pro­vok­ing. So there's po­et­ry and dra­mat­ic read­ings, rea­son­ing and pan and mu­sic and some video in­stal­la­tions. But in talk­ing with friends and col­leagues about what sort of shape the event should take I want­ed it to have a more per­ma­nent el­e­ment, in the form of an In­de­pen­dence De­c­la­ra­tion 2012. I've asked some of my friends with whom I've been hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions about who we are and where we're go­ing and who we want to be to give me some of their thoughts.

How did it orig­i­nate and how did you get in­volved?

Free Yuh­self is part of the Africa Cen­tre's Africa Sa­lon se­ries. The Africa Cen­tre has been a home away from home for the Black British com­mu­ni­ty and dif­fer­ent parts of the African Di­as­po­ra since the 1960s, do­ing re­al­ly pro­gres­sive work in bring­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the glob­al south to­geth­er cre­ative­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly. I was ap­proached by Melanie Abra­hams, who was al­so one of the cu­ra­tors for the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go Cul­tur­al Vil­lage.

In your in­vi­ta­tion to your friends to sub­mit their thoughts, you talk about the his­to­ry of our "lib­er­a­tors and vi­sion­ar­ies" and the lega­cy they have giv­en us. Who are some of these peo­ple you re­fer to, and do you think their lega­cy is vis­i­ble in T&T to­day?

I'm think­ing of Learie Con­stan­tine, crick­eter, au­thor and men­tor of CLR James; Hen­ry Sylvestre Williams, a lawyer who con­vened the first Pan African Con­gress; Clau­dia Jones, a com­mu­nist ag­i­ta­tor born in Bel­mont who or­gan­ised the first Car­ni­val in Lon­don in the 1950s; and of course Kwame Ture; George Pad­more. From a pan-African per­spec­tive T&T has giv­en the world some lead­ing voic­es in glob­al strug­gles for free­dom from colo­nial­ism. And then of course you have the artists and writ­ers like the orig­i­nal Lone­ly Lon­don­er Sam Selvon; the tick­lish VS Naipaul; Min­shall, who left a lu­cra­tive ca­reer at Sadlers Wells to come home and make mas. I can think of few if any mon­u­ments or lessons or spaces of learn­ing for any of these peo­ple in Trinidad and un­for­tu­nate­ly the voic­es and vi­sions of our free­dom fight­ers get lost in the sto­ries of po­lit­i­cal par­ties-one on­ly has to think of CLR James and how he was sub­se­quent­ly treat­ed by Er­ic Williams when the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment came in­to pow­er. We've for­got­ten most of their names, and cer­tain­ly their lega­cies. I find my­self fre­quent­ly won­der­ing why this gen­er­a­tion is so silent on cer­tain is­sues, why we aren't more keyed in­to a sense of par­tic­i­pa­tion. We cer­tain­ly have the in­for­ma­tion, the tech­nol­o­gy and the mo­bil­i­ty.

How do you an­swer your own ques­tions-"How does the post-In­de­pen­dence gen­er­a­tion en­gage with the idea of free­dom? And who de­fines our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty now that we are sup­pos­ed­ly free?"

These ques­tions are hard! But they need an­swer­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly there's noth­ing in our ed­u­ca­tion in school or in the main­stream me­dia help­ing us pre­pare for that ex­am that is on­go­ing, every sin­gle day as we move through the land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go or as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans mov­ing through oth­er land­scapes. I think all gen­er­a­tions have to con­front them­selves and how they con­tribute to our for­ward move­ment. I don't want any fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to ac­cuse me of be­ing slack! I think self-gov­er­nance and In­de­pen­dence have not cre­at­ed the kind of so­ci­ety that lives up to us all find­ing an equal place. Every class cer­tain­ly doesn't find an equal place! I'm not sure that we now know who or what a Tri­ni is. We came and met a cer­tain sort of de­f­i­n­i­tion but I don't think that fits our cur­rent re­al­i­ties. I feel like we should have a con­stant en­gage­ment with the idea of In­de­pen­dence, since we are still con­fronting some of the same prob­lems that ex­ist­ed when we were gov­erned by a colo­nial pow­er.

Fi­nal­ly, de­tails on the event, the where, the when, the how etc. Is it go­ing to be on­line for those not in Britain?

It's on Sep­tem­ber 4 at 7pm at the Africa Cen­tre, King Street, Covent Gar­den. En­trance £5/£3 (con­ces­sions for un­em­ployed, stu­dents OAPs).

I'll see what I can do about set­ting up a uS­tream!