Jude Kelly is the Artistic Director of Southbank Centre,
Britain's largest cultural institution. Southbank Centre consists
of the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth
Hall (containing the Purcell Room), and the Saison Poetry Library.
Southbank Centre also manages the Arts Council Collection and
organises the National Touring Exhibition programme in venues
throughout the UK.
Situated on the south bank of the River Thames, Southbank Centre
is at the heart of London's arts quarter and showcases local,
national and international work across classical and contemporary
music, dance and performance, learning and participation, the
visual arts, and literature and spoken word.
Jude founded Solent People's Theatre in 1976 and Battersea Arts
Centre in 1980, and became the Artistic Director of the York
Festival and Mystery Plays in 1988. She later became the founding
director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse where as Artistic Director
and then CEO she established it as an acknowledged centre of
excellence. In 1997, she was awarded the OBE for her services
to the theatre. She has directed over 100 productions
including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre,
Chichester Festival Theatre, the English National Opera, the
Châtalet in Paris and in the West End.
Jude left the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2002 to found Metal,
artistic laboratory spaces in London, Liverpool and Southend.
Metal provides a platform where creative hunches and ideas can be
pursued. It also involves cross-art collaborations and developing
strategic projects to affect the built environment, people,
communities and philosophies.
Amongst her many successes as a director, Jude's production of
Singin' in the Rain transferred twice to the Royal National Theatre
and was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical
Production in 2001. She directed Sir Ian McKellen in The
Seagull and The Tempest, Patrick Stewart in Johnson over Jordon and
Othello, Dawn French in When We Are Married, and the English
National Opera in The Elixir of Love (Southbank Award - Newcomer
Opera) On the Town, which was the ENO's most successful production
to date and was revived in 2007 at the London Coliseum and in 2008
at Théâtre du Châtelet, Carmen Jones, and the Wizard of Oz at the
refurbished Royal Festival Hall. More recently, Jude directed Paco
Pena's Flamenco sin Fronteras in 2009 and Quimeras, also by Paco
Pena, which had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International
Festival in September 2010, and a production of Bernstein's MASS at
the Royal Festival Hall.
Jude has represented Britain within UNESCO on cultural matters,
served on the Arts Advisory Committee for Royal Society of Arts,
and jointly chaired with Lord Puttnam the Curricula Advisory
Committee on Arts and Creativity. She is chair of Metal, a
member of the London Cultural Consortium, sits on the board of
Creativity, Culture & Education, the board of New Deal of the
Mind and on the Cultural Olympiad Board, and is part of the ongoing
framework for delivering the creative, cultural and educational
aspects of London's Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. She is
visiting Professor at Kingston University and Leeds University and
holds several honorary degrees from national and international
universities.
