• An archive, library, educational resource and research centre that will allow the materials in its care to be available for use by interested individuals and groups, both in person and through the use of modern storage, retrieval and communication methods. To this end the George Padmore Institute has employed a professional archivist to catalogue and manage the numerous collections in our care. See The Archives section of the website for more information on this.


• Educational and cultural activities including conferences, courses, seminars, talks and readings. Some of the activities we have organised include poetry readings by writers such as Kamau Brathwaite and Jayne Cortez; talks by speakers as diverse as Garth Crooks (footballer and broadcaster), Waveney Bushell (educational psychologist) and Shirley Thompson (composer). See the Publications and Past Events section for a full list of what we have already organised, and the Future Events listings for what is coming up at the George Padmore Institute and elsewhere.
• The publication of relevant materials. For example, the George Padmore Institute has published some of its talks in the book Changing Britannia: Life Experience With Britain and is in the process of making other material ready for publication. See the Publications and Events section for a full description and list of Institute material available.

In the long term, the George Padmore Institute aims to be as self-sufficient as possible. Over the years we have received a number of generous grants from a variety of organisations to finance some of our work. In the past we have received grants from the Sir John Cass Foundation, the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust, the Churches Commission for Racial Justice, the Hilden Charitable Fund, the Stone Ashdown Trust, the Matthew Hodder Charitable Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

We have also been the recipient of two major grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund: the first funded our three-year Changing Britannia Archive Project (2003-2006) and the second is funding the current Crossing Borders Archive Project (2006-2008). We are, however, always grateful for donations and for volunteer help to push ahead with the projects listed above.

Please contact us to find out more or to give a donation. We are also registered for Gift Aid, so please let us know if you are a UK taxpayer.

He was a key figure in the organisation of the influential 5th Pan African Congress held in Manchester in 1945 and was an adviser to Kwame Nkrumah before and after the independence of Ghana in 1957. George Padmore died after a short illness in 1959.

Padmore’s vision was of a world unburdened from the arrogance and tribulation of empires and dedicated to equality, solidarity and hope. We have named our Institute after George Padmore as we see it continuing the traditions which shaped his life: independent, radical vision and outlook connecting the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, North America and Asia.

New Beacon Books is the specialist bookshop, international book service and publishing house which has also worked closely with and supported many educational, cultural and political initiatives in the black community in Britain and continental Europe since its founding in 1966. New Beacon Books was initially set up as a publishing house by John La Rose with the active support and assistance of Sarah White. They were joined by Janice Durham in 1979 and Michael La Rose in 1983. In 1967 New Beacon Books went into bookselling because of the demand for books stimulated through the work of the Caribbean Artists Movement, also founded in late 1966 in Britain. There was also a cultural resurgence among blacks in Britain that came with the black consciousness and black power movements of that period.

New Beacon Bookshop has been a resource base for primary and secondary school teachers, university lecturers, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, writers on various genres, librarians, parents, students, community organisations and the general public. It has directly stimulated interest in works from and about the Caribbean, Africa, African America, Asia, black Britain and black Europe and has contributed to the development of the multi-cultural curriculum in the UK. The publishing house has provided opportunities for new creative voices from Britain and the diaspora, encouraging and enabling young and new writers and poets to get their work into print.

New Beacon Books has always believed that it was important to learn how to function as an independent organisation, a belief born out of the experience of John La Rose growing up in a colonial Trinidad. In a society where colonial policy was based on a deliberate withholding of information from the population, publishing and providing information are the vehicles for giving an independent validation to one’s own culture, history, politics, one’s own sense of self. The ethos and methods of working that have been key to the development of New Beacon Books since 1966 have been carried through into the work of the George Padmore Institute.

The work of the GPI is directed by a board of Trustees who have all been connected in some way with these educational, cultural and political activities. John La Rose was the Chairman of the Institute until his death in 2006, and the Institute is currently chaired by Michael La Rose with Sarah White as Secretary. It is due to the activities of New Beacon Books and its Trustees that the archives of the George Padmore Institute include a number of important and unique collections such as the Caribbean Artists Movement, the Black Education Movement, the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books and the New Cross Massacre Action Committee, amongst others. We also have in our possession, or will have in the future when the Institute is ready to manage them, the individual archives of a number of our Trustees including those of John La Rose, Gus John and Ian Macdonald QC. Some of these date back to the 1940s and 1950s.

1966 – The Caribbean Artists Movement

1969 – The Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association

1969 – The George Padmore Supplementary School, later called the George Padmore Community School

1975 – The Black Parents Movement and the Black Youth Movement emerged from the core of parents, students and teachers of the George Padmore Community School

1981 – The New Cross Massacre Action Committee

1982 – New Beacon Books founded in association with two other publishers, Race Today Publications and Bogle L’Overture Publications, the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, which held 12 important Book Fairs between 1982 and 1995

The archives of many of these organisations are lodged with the George Padmore Institute.