Jude Kelly

Jude Kelly CBE
Kelly in 2008
Born	Judith Pamela Kelly March 1954 (age 70) Liverpool,Lancashire,England
Education	Calder High School for Girls/Quarry Bank Comprehensive School
Alma mater	The University of Birmingham
Occupation(s)	Theatre director and producer
Notable work	Founder of theWomen of the World Festival(WOW)
Spouse(s)	Michael Bird, m. 1993
Children	3, includingCaroline Bird

Judith"Jude"Pamela Kelly,CBE(born March 1954), is a British theatre director and producer. She is a directorof the WOW Foundation, which organises the annualWomen of the World Festival,founded in 2010 by Kelly. From 2006 to 2018, she wasArtistic Directorof theSouthbank Centrein London.

Early life and education

Jude Kelly was born inLiverpool,and her love of theatre dates back to her childhood there, where she would put on plays in her backyard with the neighbours' children: "I've always had a passion for telling a story," she has said.She attended Calder High School for Girls until she was 13, when it became part ofQuarry Bank Comprehensive School,where she was taught byJohn Lennon's old headmaster, William Pobjoy, who encouraged his pupils to be creative.Already determined to become a director, she chose to study drama atThe University of Birmingham,one of a small number of single honours degree courses available at the time. Kelly graduated with a BA in Drama and Theatre Arts from Birmingham in 1975 where she was a contemporary of comedian, writer and actressVictoria Wood.

Career

Kelly founded Solent People's Theatre, a touring company, in 1976, and was artistic director of theBattersea Arts Centrefrom 1980 to 1985. She became the founding director of theWest Yorkshire Playhousefrom 1990 to 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 byKen Robinson,that in 1999 wrote theAll Our Futuresreport,which led to significant government investment in young people's creative and cultural education.

She has directed more than 100 productions, including forChichester Festival Theatre,theEnglish National Opera(ENO), theChâteletinParis, France,and London'sWest End.

Kelly left the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2002 to found Metal Culture, providing artistic laboratory spaces in Liverpool,PeterboroughandSouthend,funded byArts Council Englandand local authorities.Metal provides a platform where creative hunches and ideas can be pursued; it promotes cross-art collaborations and projects to affect the built environment, people, communities and philosophies.

Among her many successes as a director, Kelly's production ofSingin' in the Raintransferred to theRoyal National Theatreas one of the National's visiting productions and was awarded theLaurence Olivier Awardfor Outstanding Musical Production in 2001. She directed SirIan McKelleninThe SeagullandThe Tempest,Patrick StewartinJohnson Over JordanandOthello,Dawn FrenchinWhen We Are Married,and the English National Opera inThe Elixir of Love(South Bank Award – Newcomer Opera) andOn the Town,which was the ENO's most successful production at the time,Carmen Jones,andThe Wizard of Ozat the refurbishedRoyal Festival Hall.Kelly directedPaco Peña'sFlamenco sin Fronterasin 2009.

In 2006, she becameArtistic Directorof theSouthbank Centrein central London,Britain's largest cultural institution.The Centre consists of the Royal Festival Hall, theHayward Gallery,Queen Elizabeth Hall(containing thePurcell Room), and theSaison Poetry Library.Southbank Centre also manages theArts Council Collectionand organises theNational Touring Exhibitionsprogramme in venues throughout the UK. Kelly's decision to step down as artistic director after 12 years, in order to devote herself to WOW, was announced in January 2018.

Her 2018 production ofLeonard Bernstein'sMASSat the Royal Festival Hall was described by one critic as a "wasted opportunity".

Kelly's talk at a 2016TEDconference,Why women should tell the stories of humanity,has been viewed more than 1.1 million times as of July 2018.

Festivals

Kelly speaking at theWomen of the World Festivalin 2014

In 2010, she founded theWomen of the World Festival(WOW), first held in the Southbank Centre, which celebrates the achievements of women and girls as well as looking at the obstacles they face, and which is now an annual international event.

In 2014, she founded theBeing a Man Festival(BAM), also held in the Southbank Centre, a UK-based festival that addresses the challenges and pressures of masculine identity in the 21st century.

Financial education

Alongside Olga Miler Christen, Kelly founded Smartpurse Limited in 2019 in order to provide financial advice and education to women.

Personal life

Kelly has a daughter – the poet and playwrightCaroline Bird(born 1986)– and two sons, one of whom died young.She married their father, the actor, writer and director Michael Bird (stage name Birch) in 1993.

Recognition and awards

In 2006, Kelly was named number 8 in "Theatreland's top 100 players" byThe Independentnewspaper.

Kelly has represented Britain withinUNESCOon cultural matters, served on the Arts Advisory Committee for theRoyal Society of Arts,and jointly chaired withLord Puttnamthe Curricula Advisory Committee on Arts and Creativity. She is chair of Metal, a member of the London Cultural Consortium, and a member of the Dishaa Advisory Group. She previously sat on the board ofCreativity, Culture and Education(CCE) when it ran the government's flagship creative learning programme,Creative Partnerships,funded by the government with £40m per year by the education and cultural departments, working in one in five schools in England, reaching more than 1 million young people over 10 years.She is Chair of the Trustees for World Book Night and was on theCultural OlympiadBoard that was responsible for delivering the creative, cultural and educational aspects ofLondon's OlympicandParalympic Gamesin 2012. Despite her involvement in these significant investments by the UK government in the preceding ten years, in 2013, she claimed that no action had been taken by the state relating to young people's cultural education since the 1999 NACCCE report or the Henley Review in 2012.

She is visiting professor atKingston University,Leeds Universityand at Shanghai Performing Arts School.

In October 2012, Kelly was presented with aBASCAGold Badge Award in recognition of her services to music.

In February 2013 she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom byWoman's HouronBBC Radio 4,and also recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women.AlreadyOfficer of the Order of the British Empire(OBE), she was appointedCommander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) in the2015 New Year Honoursfor services to the arts.

In September 2018, to markTime Outmagazine's 50th anniversary, she was one of 50 people featured as helping to shape London's cultural landscape and "make the city awesome".

External links

• Metal