Barbados-born Kevin Farmer ended his first visit to Charleston recently with the vision of an annual festival to celebrate the historic ties between his Caribbean homeland and South Carolina.
“That is my dream, nothing is written or agreed upon,” Farmer, deputy director of the 91-year-old Barbados Museum and Historical Society in Bridgetown, said as he sat in a sunny room in the main house at McLeod Plantation Historic Site on James Island.
More than 350 years ago, Barbadian planters and their enslaved workforce were among the first settlers in the Carolina colony. But the seed for an annual celebration of the Carolina-Barbados connection, he said, was planted more than three decades ago by the Barbados and the Carolinas Legacy Foundation in Charleston.
“For a very long time, [the connection] has been geared toward tourism,” and recently business, he said. “But I think there is great hope between heritage institutions in both of our spaces toward the development of traveling exhibitions” and an annual observance, beginning in 2026.
The International African American Museum (IAAM), Farmer proposes, could be the festival’s base in Charleston with activities at former plantations in the area.
An opportunity to pitch his idea for simultaneous festival events in both countries could come next year when the IAAM hosts the Museum Association of the Caribbean annual meeting. “Any museum in this region that is doing Caribbean work will be there,” he said.
The quaint community of Speightstown on Barbados’ western shore could be the Caribbean site for the festival that he would call “Down Home.”
When a Bajan who lives outside of their country “talks about an ancestral home and family, they say they are going ‘down home,’ ” Farmer explained. “Going down home is returning to that house where everything began.”
Reaction to the idea
Ashlei Elise, the IAAM’s newly hired chief marketing officer, said, “We are very interested in beginning that conversation on how we create this annual festival with IAAM and the Barbados Museum. We look forward to creating this unique relationship.”
Charleston and Barbados “share a legacy shaped by migration, trade and the enduring cultural influences of the African Diaspora, making this relationship both meaningful and necessary,” said Brandon Reid, the IAAM’s public historian.
Charleston resident Rhoda Green, president of the Barbados and the Carolina Legacy Foundation, called the festival idea “a seed of an idea [that] has to be formulated and a good way to do that is to work with the people who have been preparing the ground.”
While some Charlestonians are familiar with the long history between Barbados and South Carolina, many others are not, said Sandy Slater, director of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program at the College of Charleston.
“This would be a marvelous way to share food traditions and architectural history, but always underscoring the very painful human cost of the origins of the Carolina colony,” she said.
Farmer proposes to launch the festival in 2026. Next year is the 400th anniversary of when England claimed Barbados for King James I. In 2028, Bridgetown, the capital city, turns 400 years old.
“For me, 2026 seems like an opportune time in between those two pivotal dates to begin to tell the story because this story is about the development of sugar and rum that was pioneered in Barbados,” Farmer said. “Sugar, rum and enslavement are a global story that connects Speightstown, Bridgetown and Charleston.”
Farmer traveled to Charleston with Elizabeth Hinds, the chief guide at the Barbados Museum. As they toured the city, they were struck by the Barbados influences on local place names, architecture and foodways. Hinds said she was impressed with the city’s interpretative markers that tell African American history.
“We also need to explore what happened to the 200 to 300 enslaved people who were brought directly from Barbados to Charleston,” Farmer added. “It would be nice to find out what happened to them.”
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