Genevieve Dawson
Duration
Genevieve Dawson is a songwriter-composer, performer, and community music worker originally from Edinburgh and now based in London. Her work weaves together elements of folk, jazz, choral and electronic textures.
Her debut album was championed by BBC 6 Music and Jazz FM, and featured on Guy Garvey’s finest hour. Her most recent release what’s mine is yours explores our interconnectedness and relationship to place, loss and shame.
As a composer she often uses participative methods through embodied practices with the voice – using group improvisation to explore our connected and collective voice. In 2024 she wrote the music for the critically acclaimed play A Child of Science at the Bristol Old Vic, a story about the origins of IVF, forming a choir of people whose lives had been altered by IVF to feature on the score.
Beyond writing and performance Genevieve is a social justice facilitator, community music worker, and the founder-director of The South-East London Queer Choir. She has worked as an organiser and facilitator across social and climate justice projects with 350.org, Greenpeace and Green New Deal Rising, with a particular focus on youth participation. This year she was a lead facilitator for Earth Percent’s Sing Wild Seeds project exploring better futures through songwriting at festivals and in community spaces. Genevieve is the recipient of the Sound and Music Seed Award 2024.
‘At Cove Park, I will be spending the time researching, writing and exploring a new piece of performance/composition work exploring the story of a woman killed as a witch near Nairn in Scotland – a piece which explores dispossession, ecocide and collective power.’