JUDE Kelly, OBE, the Liverpool girl who rose to become one of the most powerful executives in Britain’s cultural world, is returning to her home city.
Once regarded as the best woman Liverpool’s 2008 Europena Capital of Culture Year never had, the city has finally got its girl. She has been appointed as Creative Director of next year’s International Festival of Business taking place in Liverpool next summer.
Her appointment was announced in London today as the 12-month countdown began to what will be one of the world’s biggest business events of 2016.
The IFB is being repeated with Government backing after the success of the debut event last year which brought business leaders from across the world to Merseyside.
It is likely she will use her flair and experience to sprinkle a much needed dose of dynamism to the showcase business event, which in the eyes of many ordinary people in Liverpool largely passed unnoticed in 2014
Kelly is artistic director of London’s Southbank Centre, Britain’s largest cultural institution.
Schooled at Quarry Bank in Liverpool before heading to the University of Birmingham, she has spent her professional life in the world of arts and culture. She was honoured by the Queen for services to the arts in 1993 and was named by BBC Woman"s Hour as one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK.
Her appointment as Creative Director of the IFB will be seen as a major cultural coup for the city.
It is likely she will use her flair and experience to sprinkle a much needed dose of dynamism to the showcase business event, which in the eyes of many ordinary people in Liverpool largely passed unnoticed in 2014.
But quite how her vision will play out on the Government business stage will be watched with interest.
Her stance against the Government’s arts funding cuts has been unequivocal. "If you try to preserve the arts for the few and not the many, you’re not building a practical, safe, peaceful and creative community," she says.
Kelly was chair of Culture, Ceremonies and Education at the London Organising Committee for the 2012 Olympic Games.
Even today’s business reports from London focussed on economic matters, leaving the important announcement of Jude Kelly virtually as a footnote well down the reports.
Kelly, who is 60, was only into her early twenties when, in 1976, she founded the Solent People's Theatre, becoming just four years later artistic director of the Battersea Arts Centre.
After a spell at the Royal Shakespeare Company, she became the founding director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse from 1990–2002, where as artistic director and then CEO she established it as an acknowledged centre for excellence.
As the artistic director, she sat on the National Advisory Committee for Culture, Creativity and Education (NACCCE), led by Ken Robinson (educationalist) that wrote the influential All Our Futures report which led to significant Government investment in young people's creative and cultural education.
She has directed over 100 productions including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, the English National Opera, the Châtelet in Paris and in the West End.
Kelly left the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2002 to found Metal, artistic laboratory spaces at Edge Hill Station in Liverpool. It 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.
Amid much shaking of heads, she was snubbed for the role of artistic director of Liverpool's tenure as European Capital of Culture in 2008. That job went to Australian Robyn Archer who lasted six months in the job.
