A Barbadian architect and educator has demonstrated why it is important for Caribbean people to incorporate climate change impacts into their design solutions for almost every sphere of activity. Alana Brooks is one of five (5) regional awardees of the Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Fund’s (CIIF) Visual Arts Biennial Prize Grants.

The CIIF is administered by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). Between 2019-2023, it awarded over 30 grants which have positively impacted more than 500 beneficiaries in the 19 borrowing member states of the Bank, including Haiti. Brooks’ project received a USD 5,000 prize grant award after being adjudicated alongside other project pitches as the closing activity of the CIIF-funded I.C.E. Visual Arts Biennial Accelerator led by Animae Caribe https://www.animaecaribe.com/ac-statelessness/, in partnership with Hillside House in 2021.

Aiming to address the subject of “Statelessness”, Brooks recalled dissecting the overarching accelerator theme and also responding to challenges confronting Caribbean people who become displaced, not because they chose to leave their homes, but were forced to do so as a result of climate action or other disaster.

“It is one thing to confront displacement as a result of decisions to migrate, but it is another thing when you are forced to move.  I wanted to respond to that but also come up with a response that allows you to do so, while also retaining a sense of our own cultural and individual identities. That’s how I addressed the “stateless” theme,” she pointed out.

Brooks, who is in her thirties, is the daughter of an architect, and explained that while there was definitely a family influence in choosing her career path, she has always had a special love for art.

Though working in her father’s firm, the CIIF prize grant winner is an instructor in the Barbados Community College’s Architecture and the Fine Arts programmes, as well as in the Building Studies programme of the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology.

For Brooks, the small moveable wooden houses popular with working class people living on sugar plantation lands, was the catalyst for her proposed solution to the issue of statelessness. Recreating a responsive housing solution for people of the region that are impacted or are likely to be impacted by climate action but is also wholly authentic, is Brooks’ goal.

“I was keen on finding a solution to how do we as Caribbean people respond to having to move around without choice and also to retain a sense of our own cultural and individual identity. I am talking about any nation in the Caribbean.”

She added “I was happy to see how I could pay homage to the invaluable influence of chattel house architecture and apply it to the concept of displacement.”

Originally, the chattel house was designed as a response to economic and social circumstances during a specific period in the region’s history, however Brooks’ project looks to effect that housing concept to circumstances of instability, climate crises and natural disasters.

She outlined the other stage of her winning project, which is still under development, seeks to determine how to make her project idea technically operable. That component will examine sources of materials for housing construction. “Ideally, we would want to source materials that are native to the Caribbean or at least can be processed by companies in the region. This is really a whole other body of research,” she outlined.

The young professional, who has married her professional training with her love for art and culture, heaped praise on CDB for its continued focus on the creative industries and the development of MSMEs. Moreover, she stressed that CDB’s insistence on the involvement of partnerships with counterparts across the region was encouraging.

“To be able to engage with other artists in the Caribbean was something I truly appreciated. . . It revealed just how much talent exists in the region and our ability to be involved in the economy,” she noted.

Brooks added “These projects, supported by the CDB, also increase the opportunities for collaborations for art professionals and practitioners in these islands. Importantly, they also allow us to scale up by combining resources. Equally significant is they help to reduce the brain drain when it comes to creatives because a space is being created  for us and opportunities to make a meaningful contribution to our countries and communities.”

Thanking the Bank for its continued commitment, Brooks stated: “CDB is helping to promote the concept that we can stay in the region and build the region from within, and that creatives are very much part of that process by contributing to solutions. Moreover, we are demonstrating that the solutions don’t have to be imported. The process was also such an amazing opportunity to network, receive encouragement and know that there are persons within CDB who understand and want us to create structures in our businesses, and to be accountable for funding that we receive. It was simply a wonderful learning experience.”