About Us

StrongBack Productions promotes and stimulates understanding, solidarity, and appreciation of each other through the arts, particularly through poetry and music.

With our partner, Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions we work in and with communities to build bridges and bring to the fore the extraordinary and everyday lives and hidden histories that surround us.

Rooted in the Caribbean heritage of our founders, our perspective is inclusive, integrating the arts as a way of translating life. Our annual Come On In programme provides access to the underserved arts through participation in collective creativity.

So….what do we do?

We deliver an annual programme through Come On In: an invitation to explore the worlds on our doorstep, discovering what we share and appreciating our variances.

We bring together in conversation poets, musicians and visual artists with those working in and using everyday workplaces, transforming these conversations into visual song-poems.

StrongBack’s history/origin:

StrongBack Productions was founded in 2013 by Patricia Cumper, playwright, director and cultural commentator and Dominique Le Gendre, composer, curator and producer. A small project funded arts charity, we have created performances and events inspired by the lives of African, Asian and Caribbean women, the life and work of St. Lucian poet and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, little known music archives from Berwick-upon-Tweed and the recorded contributions of Jamaican soldiers to World War 1.

Since 2013, StrongBack has issued 45 commissions, collaborated with over 400 producers, writers, poets, musicians, composers, filmmakers, performers, directors, designers, lighting designers and production and technical facilitators. Our performances, events and digital offerings have reached over 7,000 audiences while our workshops and talks have attracted 300 participants. We’ve partnered with organisations such as The National Maritime Museum, Ovalhouse, Brixton East, Rich Mix, The Maltings Theatre and Cinema Berwick-upon-Tweed, Berwick Record office, Tara Arts, The British Library, Migration Museum, Imperial War Museums, Croydon Adult Education, WAC arts, Speaking Volumes, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, The Baytree Centre, Loughborough Farm,
Photofusion, Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, 3Space, Brixton £, and the London Festival of Architecture.