Promoting the Trailways Project and Exploring Barbados’ Culture Heritage
Climate change increasingly poses health and infrastructure risk to Barbados and its people. Since 1994, Future Centre Trust, a green non-governmental organization, educates Barbadians and visitors about the growing climate crisis. Future Centre Trust supports conservation and preservation efforts in Barbados and promotes sustainable practices among its communities. Three main programs advance the Trust’s mission and vision: Clean Up Barbados; Donation Nation, an upcycling centre; and the Barbados Trailway Project.
Through the Trailway Project, Future Centre Trust transforms the old Barbados railway that once transported goods and slaves between the east and west coasts into an accessible pathway for safe, non-polluting modes of transportation and recreation. Once completed, The Trailway will span 40 kilometers (km) from Bridgetown to Consett Bay near Codrington College.
Barbados Trailway Project
Walkers, joggers and runners share their thoughts about the Trailway with the strategic communication team.
Future Centre Trust welcomed the strategic communication team to The Valley, a trailhead of the Barbados Trailway Project not far from Bridgetown. Students walked the paved and unpaved portions of the trailway, interviewing walkers, joggers and runners about how they discovered the trail, how often they use it, what they enjoy about it and what they think could be improved. Using clips from these interviews, the team edited a one-minute video in Adobe Premiere Pro to convey the purpose and value of the Trailway to potential donors.
The Trailway Project promotes alternative transportation methods and recreational activities, including cycling. Future Centre Trust envisions the project to help Barbadians reduce gas emissions, conserve fossil fuels and address non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and obesity. As of May 2025, only 4.1 km of the intended 40 km Trailway project has been paved and all of it requires regular maintenance of vegetation. Donors advance and sustain of the project through their generous financial support.
In April 2025, while still in Lexington, Virginia, the strategic communication team kicked off its collaboration with Future Centre Trust on two fronts. First, the Trust tasked the team to promote the experience of the trailway to prospective donors. Second, the Trust tasked the team to raise awareness for Barbados’s cultural heritage by amplifying efforts made by organizations near the trailway, such as Codrington College. Future Centre Trust’s Stacey Alvarez de la Campa and consultant Manfred McKenzie provided guidance to the strategic communication team by organizing events and interviews with key stakeholders.
Cultural Heritage at Codrington College
Rev. Dr. Michael Clark, principal of Codrington College, discusses the institution's cultural heritage.
By traveling the trailway on foot or by bike, Barbadians and visitors alike can confront the island’s colonial history. In reconciling this past, people can learn, grow and collectively take steps toward a more unified and equitable future.
Codrington College, an Anglican seminary in Consett Bay in the parish of St. John, resides at the end of the proposed Trailway Project. The land on which the college stands began as a plantation where slaves were routed and distributed using the old train line. The plantation itself was built on the labor of enslaved Africans. Now, Codrington College commits to addressing its colonial history, supports descendants of slavery and educates the wider community about Barbados’ slaveholding past.
The strategic communication team toured Codrington College and conducted a sit-down interview with its principal, Rev. Dr. Michael A. Clarke. Rev. Dr. Clarke discussed the college’s history, the old railway and their links to slavery. The team captured B-roll of the grounds using professional camera equipment and their phones.
Through their work, the strategic communication team hopes for increased awareness of Barbados’ cultural heritage associated with the trailway and its terminus as well as progressive dialogues among Barbadians and visitors about the impacts of colonialism.
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