United Kingdom and the BBC Salandy-Brown left Trinidad at the age of 17 to attend university in the
United Kingdom. Among the programmes produced by Salandy-Brown for the BBC was
BBC Radio 4's
Start the Week, presented by
Melvyn Bragg. Bragg recalled the beginning of their successful long-term collaboration: "I met this producer Marina Salandy-Brown and neither she nor I wanted to go on doing the same
Start the Week. I remember we had lunch together – and I said, 'Well, if I'm going to go on I want to do this sort of stuff,' And she said, 'So do I' – or she said it first and I agreed…. And then we just conscientiously, steadily put that into operation and changed the programme." In the new styling of the programme, "The producer, Marina Salandy-Brown, and I introduced scientists, historians and philosophers on to that Monday morning slot, and changed the nature of the programme. A change which I am glad that my successor
Jeremy Paxman and his successor
Andrew Marr have kept." Other programmes Salandy-Brown produced for BBC Radio 4 included the series
Work Talk (1991–92), presented by
Ferdinand Dennis, and
Book at Bedtime, a 1993 edition featuring
Lawrence Scott's novel
Witchbroom, abridged by
Margaret Busby. In the early 1980s, Salandy-Brown was involved with the Black Media Workers' Association (BMWA), a pressure group for better training and employment opportunities for black workers in the mainstream press and broadcasting, and in 1982 she conducted research that was the basis for the BMWA report
Black Workers in the Media. As Home Editor of
BBC Radio 5 Live, Salandy-Brown was concerned with implementing a diversity policy, arguing in 2002 that "there is no point having diverse people if you don’t allow them to be diverse". She explained the context: "When I joined the BBC in 1984 there were no people of colour working in radio production in the four national domestic services, except one producer from India.... On BBC TV there was one Caribbean woman news presenter,
Moira Stuart.... I was determined not to be the first and last Caribbean person to be a BBC radio producer. I immediately started making programmes about people whose voices were never heard by the British public. I made programmes that promoted Caribbean and developing country cultures, politics and people.... The programmes won prizes and proved that there was a world of stories out there to be told and that all people could be included in the BBC without outraging the British public. They just had to be the very best in quality. I was able to recruit researchers and producers of non-European origin to my production teams.... I also introduced new non-European presenters and subjects to the airwaves. My success paved the way for others to follow as staff members and as presenters....And, even when the argument was won over hiring a work force that represented the population, myopic editors would often pigeon-hole non-white producers and presenters."
Return to Trinidad Returning to Trinidad in 2004 to be with her mother, Integral since 2006 in the development of the
Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, of which she was executive director for four years, she also became a consultant to the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company. She also works across the Caribbean as a media consultant. The Bocas Lit Fest celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2020 with a virtual festival, necessitated by the
COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2022, Salandy-Brown announced that she was "passing on the baton" to Nicholas Laughlin to serve in the roles of festival and programme director, while she remains as president of Bocas. ==Writing==