Richard Young

Pro­duc­tion De­sign­er

Fash­ion Di­rec­tor | Sto­ry­teller

You sure feel that ‘con­fi­dence-in-skin’ vibe when you come face to face with Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips. It is like a ha­lo ra­di­at­ing out­ward­ly be­fore she even opens her mouth. She af­firms this ac­qui­si­tion of bravu­ra, which did not come eas­i­ly, on her reach­ing half of a cen­tu­ry, bat­ting, ro­bust­ly, in her in­nings, as it were, with adap­tive and quick­ly adopt­ing prac­tices which con­tin­ue to for­ti­fy her in her role as a stal­wart in cul­tur­al jour­nal­ism, re­gion­al­ly.

This cul­tur­al ac­tivist as­sumed her role swift­ly as she found her call­ing in me­dia, grant­ed that she says mat­ter-of-fact­ly that she start­ed out in the south cham­ber of Guardian Me­dia, 26 years ago, sim­ply look­ing to find a job. And in­deed, this job has be­come her ca­reer, her vo­ca­tion and her pas­sion.

Her mantra, she posits, ‘is that every­thing I do must be able to in­form, ed­u­cate and en­ter­tain”. She is all about ser­vice, pas­sion­ate­ly de­sirous of show­cas­ing Caribbean tal­ent which, she has de­ter­mined, abounds in our hemi­sphere.

And she has grown from strength to strength, ar­mour­ing her­self with a re­silient dis­po­si­tion, I dare say, a gump­tion, that equips her to change the nar­ra­tive and im­pact read­ers with a trans­for­ma­tive chron­i­cling of our Caribbean cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences and fes­ti­val tra­di­tions.

The di­ver­si­ty of ex­pe­ri­ences

Lau­ra speaks from the soul, filled with joy, about her ac­cu­mu­lat­ed wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and her ca­pac­i­ty and con­nois­seur­ship to shift our Caribbean con­scious­ness, through her craft. No idle boast, when she ref­er­ences the op­por­tu­ni­ty, she had to be men­tored by Richard Stol­ley, found­ing ed­i­tor of Peo­ple Mag­a­zine, who for­mu­lat­ed the cri­te­ria of what makes a front cov­er, which mag­a­zines still fol­low to this day, dur­ing a pro­gramme for mid-lev­el pub­lish­ing pro­fes­sion­als, at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

“Every day feels like a brand new day for me, I still have so much to ac­com­plish,” says this first time Gabo Fel­low, in 2019, as a Caribbean jour­nal­ist, in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia. Hum­ble, in­deed, about her achieve­ments and al­so be­ing the sin­gu­lar Eng­lish-speak­ing jour­nal­ist to cov­er the 2013 Di­a­geo Bar­tend­ing Fi­nals on a Mediter­ranean cruise. She rem­i­nisces, with con­sum­mate joie de vivre, about sit­ting in a bull­ring in Barcelona, to wit­ness the win­ning awards, par­ty­ing on the rooftop of the Ushuaïa Tow­er in Ibiza, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing Nice and Saint-Tropez, on that trip, as more than a mem­o­rable so­journ, and coins it as “the pin­na­cle of her trav­el­ling ex­pe­ri­ence”, thus far.

More than a Labour of Love

She ad­mits it is more than a labour of love, work­ing in the me­dia, for one’s men­tal health is bom­bard­ed by the good, the bad, and of­ten­times, the very ug­ly. She has found ground­ing in uti­liz­ing sup­port and urges all to seek ther­a­py as a source of bal­ance, if not done through pri­vate prac­tice ex­per­tise, then through a pub­lic sec­tor agency. ”It is ab­solute­ly need­ed!” she as­serts cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly. It’s okay to be chal­lenged, it’s not okay to ig­nore your cog­ni­tive needs.

Fifty, the Turn­ing Point

Lau­ra Dowrich Phillips avows that she has been gift­ed to con­tribute to shap­ing our ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our pro­lif­ic re­gion­al tal­ents. She is a dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ator, ed­i­tor and pod­cast­er, ex­cit­ed about the next chap­ter of her life. She sees fifty as a turn­ing point, an ex­pe­ri­en­tial cross­road, a wa­ter­shed pe­ri­od and an ul­ti­mate new be­gin­ning. There is so much to do, to achieve, I am ex­cit­ed!”

She ma­noeu­vres with much more con­vic­tion, aware of all that she is, shed­ding hang-ups about su­per­fi­cial eval­u­a­tions with a re­pur­posed cre­do, through her self-dis­cov­ery, to em­pow­er oth­ers.

She opines, quite as­sured­ly, as if speak­ing cos­mi­cal­ly to the uni­verse, “put no lim­i­ta­tions on self, let your tal­ent shine and nev­er com­pro­mise in­tegri­ty.”

She is so en­er­gized by her evolv­ing lib­er­a­tion, cog­nizant that time is not as in­fi­nite as it seemed when we were younger, so much so, that she is com­pelled to make the best of it, not con­fin­ing her­self by her gen­der, race, body type, or any pro­to­type pro­fil­ing. She en­thus­es, with a com­fort-in-her-own-skin per­sona, that “we, women, can take up space and be what­ev­er and who­ev­er we want to be!”

I felt as if she was chan­nel­ing the ethos of the lyrics of an old chart top­per of the 1970’s that be­came a sym­bol of pro­found change for women, the world over.

“Oh yes I am wise,

But it’s wis­dom, born of pain

Yes, I’ve paid the price,

But look how much I gained.

If I have to,

I can do any­thing,

I am strong,

I am in­vin­ci­ble,

I am woman!”

~ He­len Red­dy