Profile: Jude Kelly

In this month’s issue of Professional Manager, Erika Lucas interviews Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, about the challenges of running the most eclectic arts venue in the world. It’s a task that requires vision, so how did Jude Kelly set about developing a vision for the Southbank?

Jude Kelly joined the Southbank Centre arts venue in September 2005 with a brief to create a unified, artistic vision for the centre, which sprawls across a 21-acre site along the banks of the river.

It’s a massive challenge. Southbank Centre is the largest and probably the most complex cultural institution in the world, with a £40m turnover, 350 staff and an eclectic programme which encompasses classical and contemporary music, art, literature, dance and performance.

The centre encompasses the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery, The Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Saison Poetry Library and has more than 20 artists in residence, ranging from the London Philharmonic to its own Gamelan (a Javanese percussion ensemble).

On the day I visited, the terraces were packed with people enjoying the spring sunshine while in the cafes there was a fascinating mix of tourists grabbing a quick lunch, workers having informal meetings and performers taking a break between rehearsals.

The board, under the direction of recently appointed chief executive Alan Bishop, agreed its vision should be to “become the most inspiring arts centre in the world”.  That simple but powerful statement is now the driving force behind everything the centre does.

“That vision of being inspiring allows you to think about what it means for everyone,” Kelly explains.  “So how are we inspiring to a five year old?  How can we inspire the government to think about the arts as a critical part of the way we share our experiences with each other? How can audiences inter-act and communities communicate in a way that inspires new work and inspires people who haven’t previously felt connected to the arts to feel that it’s for them?” 

 
Making sure staff were inspired by the vision too is something Kelly believed would be critical – so much so that she was determined to involve every single employee in the task of setting the new strategic direction. Everyone from the creative professionals to the people working part-time in the bar took part in a series of workshops where they discussed what made  Southbank Centre special and what might need to change to make it an even better place.

The exercise got rave reviews. “There was such broad accord, and it wasn’t at all bland,” she says. “There was such a great love and passion for the place and it gave people the permission and courage to say here’s what’s not great at the moment, now how shall we tackle it.

“We had the momentum of it being something that had been created from amongst all of us. People could already see the direction the policy was heading in, but by articulating it in a workshop we were able to go back and say ‘this is how it’s been distilled into a set of ideas that you can now help make happen’.

Kelly believes this sense of shared ownership is also what makes employees willing to go that extra mile. She describes Southbank as a bit like “a permanent festival site with all that generosity of spirit you get in a festival”.  That level of engagement is particularly important in an organisation where finances are tight, boundaries are constantly being pushed and there really isn’t such a thing as ‘business as usual’.

The centre is a not-for-profit charitable organisation. It gets its core funding from the Arts Council (around £23m in 09/10) and generates the rest from a mix of donations and sponsorship, membership fees, retail – and of course ticket sales.

“You don’t get financial stability by having a dull reputation and that means appropriate risk taking,” she says.  “We have to constantly ask ourselves whether what we are doing is interesting and has a unique voice – but also whether it makes sense commercially. You need to get people to buy into a rhythm that places that kind of risk against the security of knowing we are doing good work.”

There’s little doubt that Kelly’s own passion and drive is a key part of what binds her team together. She’s fascinated by the way culture inter-acts with society – and prepared to fight hard to make the arts accessible to all.

This is an extract from an interview with Jude Kelly featured in the July issue of Professional Manager.

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