Jay Bernard, Poet in Residence at the George Padmore Institute (GPI) for 3 months in Autumn 2016, has won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. Jay won the award for Surge:Side A, a moving and intimate performance at Camden Roundhouse. The show was produced by Speaking Volumes. Surge:Side A was formed out of the poems and essay Jay created during the residency at the GPI when researching archives relating to the New Cross Fire and New Cross Massacre Action Committee. For more information see:

Dream To Change the World The Life and Legacy of John La Rose was the GPI's exhibition which ran from May to August 2015 at Islington Museum.

We will be closed for 2 weeks from 5-16 March 2018 to allow for work on our archive storage areas.

We will be closed from 21 December 2017, reopening 8 January 2018.

For urgent enquiries, please contact us on info@georgepadmoreinstitute.org as emails will be monitored throughout this period.

For all other enquiries, please contact the office after 8 January.

See you in 2018!

Come and join us for an exciting multimedia performance by poet Jay Bernard of her work 'Surge' on Monday 4 December. We shall also be raising funds for the work of the GPI.

'Surge' revisits the case of the 1981 New Cross Massacre in which thirteen young black people were killed in a house fire. Using archive film, audio, video and her own unique voice, Bernard asks what can be learned from the New Cross case and the subsequent activism it motivated during this current age of Brexit, the Grenfell fire tragedy, the startling revival of far right extremism and Trump.

The GPI invites you to a public reading and discussion with the actor and author Allister Bain (Parrain Thorance) to launch his new memoir The French Cashew Tree.

Starting with his early years growing up in Grenada, The French Cashew Tree tells of how young Parrain observed the world sitting under his favourite cashew tree and skilfuly depicts Bain's culture, environment and the people who shaped his life.