Art the heart of the community: Gram Bella’s

By Lindsey Turnbull

The Caymanian Times chats with Cultural Practitioner and PhD student Kerri-Anne Chisholm, who runs the unique art space, Gram Bella’s, to find out more about how this relatively new cultural space came about and plans for future use.

Gram Bella’s is a creative project space in North Side, which provides a platform to support artistic exchange and community dialogue. Through dialogues, exhibitions, events, workshops and other activations, the space invites individuals to engage with art as a way of considering contemporary local and global identities.

Caymanian Times: Please tell us about where the idea for Gram Bella’s first came from.

Kerri-Anne Chisholm: For a little over a decade, I’ve been curious about how we use space — in art and everyday life, and how it shapes the ways we come together. This curiosity expanded during my early training as a curator and creative practitioner, where I explored constructing creative spaces that, at its core, felt safe for individuals to gather under the shared ‘language’ of art. I questioned how we create safe spaces to explore and that encourage exploration and meaningful interactions across cultural, ethnic, linguistic differences. 

Enchanted in this search, I started my PhD studies and found myself examining the Caribbean backyard from a curatorial space rooted in “commoning” and care. Intensive conversation with creatives who mobilise innovative spaces — Alice Yard in Trinidad, Ruby Cruel in London, Beta Local in Puerto Rico, Tilting Axis, OVADA in England, and P4 Platform in South Korea, and practitioners in Kerala, Oslo and Berlin — guided me toward the core questions that envisaged Gram Bella’s: “Can the yard be (re)centered as a creative space for negotiating community and cultural identity? Can engaging with the arts in this way generate cultural and social capital that supports social mobility?”

CT: How long did the project take to come together?

K-A C: The physical space has been in development and use since 2023, but the conceptual vision for the project space has been in motion for the better part of a decade. This process has taught me that sturdy roots do not sprout up overnight.

CT: Why this particular location?

K-A C: I have a particular affinity for North Side — it is where I grew up, where my ancestral roots run deep, and where I’ve seen the district often overlooked in terms of access and resources. When imagining a space for gathering and creating, I wanted to share my personal experiences of connecting to this landscape, and the peace and clarity that comes with its generally slower pace.

The building’s site itself holds personal significance, it is where my fraternal great-great-grandmother, Isabella “Gram Bella” Bodden, and her husband John Bodden had their caboose and backyard, with their home just across the road on the seaside. The corner of the lot was known as “The Pound” where stray animals — and occasionally overly intoxicated people — were held until collected.

Envisioning Gram Bella’s as a backyard gathering space branches from childhood memories of wandering the property with my brother, building forts and exploring the overgrowth as we imagined new worlds. In many ways, Gram Bella’s in its conceptual entirety could only exist here, it is inseparable from this place.

The privilege I bring to running this project space lies in having complete access to such a historically and geographically significant property and a desire to create a space that reconnects us with the land, with once another across district and heritage, and with the critical possibilities of art.

Next week, find out more about this exciting art space.