Gayap
Building Caribbean Narrative Infrastructure.
Strengthening narrative power through collective action, experimentation, and shared learning.
The Caribbean holds long traditions of mutual aid and collective care that offer powerful foundations for narrative work, yet the region remains under-resourced, and narrative practice across the islands is often disconnected.
Gayap brings together artists, organisers, and communities across the Caribbean to experiment with storytelling that strengthens climate justice, decolonisation, and collective action.
Illustration created by Charlotte Tom for 'Gayap: Building Carribean Narrative Infrastructure'
Roots in collective labour
Gayap is the Caribbean node of the Global Narrative Hive. Named after the Caribbean tradition of collective labour and mutual aid, where communities come together to accomplish what no one can do alone, Gayap brings together artists, organisers, researchers, communicators, educators, and cultural workers to explore how narrative power can advance more just futures in the region. The initial focus is on climate justice and LGBTQI+ rights.
The Caribbean faces escalating climate impacts alongside colonial legacies of debt and structural underinvestment, while dominant narratives still blame individuals for systemic struggles. At the same time, Caribbean communities have long traditions of mutual aid and collective care that offer powerful foundations for narrative work. Gayap exists to strengthen that foundation, connecting practitioners across the region and supporting creative, place-based narrative experimentation.
Experiments, relationships, exchange
Gayap supports artist-led projects that test how stories rooted in culture, care, and justice can land in real communities and shift how people see their shared futures. These experiments are grounded, creative, and designed for learning.
It connects practitioners working across climate justice, LGBTQI+ rights, environmental participation, and cultural production, fostering collaboration between people and sectors that rarely work together. Through connections with the Global Narrative Hive's wider network and with Puentes' Inspiratorio programme across Latin America, Gayap links Caribbean narrative work to a broader ecosystem of practitioners exploring stories of interconnection and justice across the Global South.
The GAYAP Effect
The GAYAP Effect is a Caribbean-wide visual storytelling initiative, implemented with The Cropper Foundation and Puentes as part of the multi-year Today Today, Congotay! arts for climate justice project. Through the initiative, teams of artists and community practitioners across five Caribbean countries are designing and carrying out narrative experiments using visual storytelling to explore climate justice and interconnection.