The George Padmore Institute’s 2024 Artist in Residence, Dominique Le Gendre, held a workshop at the Cultural Education Summit on 7 November 2025. A free annual event organised by Haringey Creates, the summit offered a range of performances, workshops and talks on the theme of the power of arts and culture to transform lives.
Event: Cultural Education Summit 2025
Date: 7 November
Venue: Collage Artspace2, London N22 6UJ
Composer, musician and artistic director of StrongBack Productions, Dominique drew on her experience researching archive materials held at the GPI. The workshop provided a brief introduction into what an arts residency offers, how archive collections create windows into sections of our communities and an insight to her artistic engagement with the documents she unearthed during her residency in 2024. Dominique also shared how growing up in Trinidad shaped her creative development.
Workshop participants were involved in mapping routes towards transformation through arts and culture. Asking what does transformation look like? How can it be achieved? What are the barriers and how can these be overcome? The route map aimed to create a manifesto for transformation.
Dominique Le Gendre, composer, artistic director of StrongBack Productions.
Dominique’s expansive career in music encompasses performance, composition, musical direction, teaching, curation, and event production. She has composed music for theatre, opera, chamber ensembles, art installations, dance, film, television and radio drama for BBC Radio 3 and 4. A former Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House and Manning Camerata, Dominique’s music has been commissioned and performed by BBC Radio 3 Proms, Southbank Sinfonia, ORA Singers, Nevis Ensemble, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Calabash Foundation for the Arts (Trinidad) and Hasselblad Laureat Ingrid Pollard. Her Concerto for Orchestra, for BBC Concert Orchestra premiered in March 2024 while her Missa Brevis inspired by Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si was premiered at Canterbury Cathedral in November 2024 and sung at Easter Sunday services this year. She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the arts charity StrongBack Productions.
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