contact
My name is Attillah! And before you ask....
My father named me after Malcolm X's first daughter.
I'm a Trinidad born writer, communications professional, cultural worker and archive activist with an interest in the intersections between culture, memory, festival arts and social justice. I also have extensive knowledge of African Spiritual Retentions in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean .
I craft unique sessions for local and international organizations interested in building cultural awareness into their business. This goes beyond CSR strategy building and includes understanding how to effectively communicate messages to local audiences in Trinidad and Tobago and a selection of Caribbean territories.
I have also created workshops and teaching modules using local cultural forms to effect change in organizations and facilitated workshops on using the arts to address harmful or unjust social behaviors.
I come from a family of storytellers who have used words to build worlds of possibility for future generations of Caribbean people. We are activists at the crossroads of social justice and culture theory.
We are culture. Where culture is a way of life, a spiritual sensibility, an economic framework, a way of treating the earth, a transformative pedagogy.
We are culture. Where culture is science. Where the calypsonian is your philosopher, the pannist your physicist, the mas player your skilled mathematician.
I am fortunate to have lived in a version of Trinidad and Tobago that sees our diversity as an opportunity, not a threat. What I have learned from elders, community workers, temple builders, mas players is to celebrate difference while making space to discuss the similarities, challenges and the possibility of building a version of development that humanises us.
I harness generations of stories of resilience, defiance, joy, moral and social codes, healing and justice, which have been carefully passed down through generations, and building on that knowledge with my own research to effect change in the present.
Contact
Attillah Springer
12 Warner Street
Newtown
Port of Spain
Trinidad & Tobago
Phone: +1 868 794 45 47
Consultation. Curation. Collaboration.
IWD 2024
Course Design and Facilitation - Stick Fight and Self Defense Introduction for Women in partnership with Idakeda and Kalinda Collective.
Carnival 2024
Course Designer - Carnival Skills Training in partnership with Idakeda and East Port of Spain Development Company.
Carnival 2021
Kambule Campus Course Design for Digital Workshop focusing on the art and practice of Kambule in collaboration with Idakeda and UTT.
October 2019
Event Concept and Design - 30th Anniversary of Fall of the Berlin Wall, Port of Spain
Events in collaboration with UNHCR, Belmont Secondary School, German Embassy Port of Spain
2017
Blow Way: The Legacy of Lancelot Layne
Event Concept and Design - Emancipation events in collaboration with Cree Records, Big Black Box, Banyan and Peter Doig.
Carnival 2014-2016
Event Concept and Design, Unconquered Carnival Talks and Workshops in collaboration with The Cloth Caribbean.
Summer 2015
Collaborator, British Museum Celebrating Africa season
Summer 2012
Event Concept and Design, T&T 50th Anniversary Independence celebrations, Tricycle Theatre, London
Papers. Presentations. Publications.
September 2024
Who Catching the Power : Women and Spirituality Auto-Ethnography
Frontiers Journal of Women's Studies
July 2024
Emancipation Support Committee Kwame Ture Lecture Series - Is there a Nexus Between Culture and Violence in Trinidad and Tobago? Panelist
June 2024
'Vetiver and Turpentine' - Boscoe Holder and Geoffrey Holder, Victoria Miro Gallery
June 2023
'Skin Sin' - Chris Ofili's Seven Deadly Sins, Victoria Miro Gallery
May 2023
Co-Chair of Local Committee - International Peace Research Association Biennial Conference, Hilton Trinidad.
March 2021
'Boundary Girl Speaks' - Lisa Brice “Smoke and Mirrors” , Stephen Friedman Gallery
February 2021
New York Times interview “How a Trinidadian Communist invented Notting Hill's Carnival"
August 2020
Mixcloud Carni: World - Carnival and Gender , panelist
August 2020
UN Women Caribbean UnLearn Series “Representation: the Role and Responsibility of Creative and Cultural Industries” Panelist.
July 2020
The Legacy and Future of Rebellion in the T&T Carnival , panelist
April 2020
Bocas Lit Fest “Legacies of 1970” , panelist
March 2019
'Castle In the Sand', New Daughters of Africa , Myriad Publications
March 2016
'On Being a Pagan', Varsha Pratipada Hindu Parliament, Trinidad
March 2016
'Cockroach in Fowl Party' , Panelist's Comments at 6th Annual Distinguished Jurist lecture “Whose Constitution?' by Professor Richard Drayton
June 2016
'Universal Declaration of Marronage' Closing Plenary of Caribbean Studies Association Conference, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
September 2016
'Feminism, Pan-Africanism and Identity in the Caribbean and the Diaspora', Black Feminist Forum, Bahia, Brazil
April 2014
'Orisa Retentions in Trinidad and Tobago' Fundamental Imperatives of Cohabitation Faith and Secularism Colloquium, Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria.
November 2013
'A People's Art is the Genesis of their Freedom'
TEDx Port of Spain
September 2012
'Bittersweet Spirit The Story of Rum' - Museum of London
January 2010
'The Healer' Tate Britain Chris Ofili Retrospective
May 2006
“Global Voices, Caribbean Accents – A Roundtable on Blogging in the Caribbean” – Caribbean Studies Association Conference, Port of Spain.
Contact
Attillah Springer
199 Belmont Circular Rd.
Belmont
Port of Spain
Trinidad & Tobago
Phone: +1 868 794 45 47