Milestones are strange things. With social media, numbers become paramount. You see them grow and you think, “Boy, when I make this number of followers, I’ve made it!” Or, “Oh look! This celebrity follows the page.” Yes, these things do feel good, but I feel like milestones for Know Your Caribbean (KYC) come with the community impact we make — doing live events, creating tangible experiences. This is where I feel like we are doing something right.
As the daughter of St Lucia’s first prime minister (and national hero) Sir John Compton, I have been exposed to history my whole life. My childhood home is full of old maps, paintings, drawings and photos.
I never took those things on as a child. I dropped history in form three because I truly hated it! History only came to me through my photography practice.
I grew tired of just taking “pretty” pictures. I wanted to tell a story in every image I presented, and through that, I wanted to dig deeper. I started to learn things, and even feel cheated — like, how could I not know this?
At this same time, my mum — who, like most Caribbean parents, is not very tech savvy but loves history — would ask me to bid on old postcards on eBay. They were stunning images from our past. Photographs from over a century ago: how we dressed, how our streets looked, the details of our jewellery … there was so much in one image, and I became fascinated.
When KYC was created, some of the content that I shared could be triggering and painful. I would share things focused on dates and historical facts, yet paid little attention to the human story, the emotion behind things. I presented things in a very basic, copy and paste kind of way, and didn’t consider my audience enough.
Over time, the deeper I got into things, I focused less on dates and facts and more on how stories make us feel. This is where things began to change and grow. Our history is emotional, because this is what we come from.
I see a lot of pages sharing triggering content to be provocative, and for their audience to be reactive, rather than to grow and connect, but I didn’t want that. I wanted us to thrive and feel more connected to ourselves, even when the stories are hard.
There was no formula for the journey of KYC from the initial idea to the powerful force it has become. I followed things that lit up my spirit with excitement in learning something new, and looking for a cool way to tell that story.
I like doing different things like overlaying text from the 1700s with a current piece of dancehall music to connect the dots. I speak with my Caribbean vernacular in my posts. I don’t just cover the larger countries either. What about Saba? Nevis? Marie Galante? Let’s talk about all of them.
The comments section, I think, is the best part of KYC, as this is where the community meets and connects. Academia has an air of elitism that alienates the average person. Museums and institutions have a big disconnect with the people, and I wish many more barriers would come down to allow space for those who are genuinely interested in learning.
I see a lot of pages sharing triggering content to be provocative, and for their audience to be reactive, rather than to grow and connect
It would be humbling to know if we have made an impact in Caribbean schools. I would love to see if they could take things from an emotive approach — not just the dates, facts and figures — while understanding that our history with slavery is much more complicated than Black versus White.
The hardest pill to swallow was learning about certain Maroon communities that were contracted by Europeans to capture enslaved people who ran away and sell them back into slavery. That one was tough.
Of course, I have read about a lot of the violence in our Caribbean lineages, and the unimaginable brutality we carry in our DNA. Scientists say we carry trauma going back seven generations, so understanding the extreme pain we carry with us, and knowing the details, has been hard.
I got to tell one of our more difficult stories in a way that honoured those who endured it at The World Reimagined [a national art education project in the United Kingdom about the transatlantic slave trade] — an amazing experience. I made a public art piece with the globe covered in peacock flowers. These were used by enslaved women to end their pregnancies, as they did not want their children to endure the life they did.
The globe was placed in front of a church in Liverpool — built with money from slavery — for several weeks. It was then placed in London’s Trafalgar Square [one of the iconic “emblems of empire”]. To be able to have the names of enslaved people executed for poisoning their enslavers written in gold leaf across the globe, and to have their names read, meant a lot to me and to many.
We need to talk more about reparations. What it means for us, and what we can do about it. With campaigns like Repair [working for reparatory justice in the Caribbean, guided by the CARICOM Reparations Commission], we are finding out what has been happening on the ground with those who have been putting in the work, whilst finding out about existing and upcoming reparative justice funds that are becoming available.
The Repair Campaign is necessary [because] most of us believe we should be compensated in the same way enslavers were when slavery ended, yet we don’t know where to start, how much we are owed, and how to make sure the moment is not lost.
Academia has an air of elitism that alienates the average person
The future goals of KYC are big — a book, and international television are high on the list. I want everything to be bold and authentic, where we can sit back and feel good that we are represented in the right way.
We will be pushing our show Tryin’ A Ting this year. My friend Sherween and I will try to cook something we’ve never done before, [and with] local and healthy ingredients. We have shot in three countries, and we are hoping to shoot in more so that we can celebrate the full diversity of Caribbean cuisine and culture. We aim to visit every Caribbean country to try a ting!
Our history is so vast, and I just want to encourage everyone to fall back in love with ourselves and our culture. Most of the time when I share something, it’s because I just found out myself. So, I am on this journey of discovery just like everyone else.
If we can encourage even more Caribbean pride, [showcasing] that we have a history to be proud of, not ashamed of, as we are serious survivors — I would be happy!