Sino-UK arts workshop talks up common man's interest

Performers from The Dawns Here Are Quiet, an opera production of the National Center for the Performing Arts, prepare to go onstage. NCPA holds such "open-day activities" annually.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

One of four daughters of a civil servant and a teacher, she grew up in 1960s Liverpool. Her grandmother, who left school at age 12 and subsequently raised 14 children, had little social life or time for cultural activities. But unlike women from the older generations, Jude Kelly's passion as a little girl was to gather children in her neighborhood and tell them stories or perform plays with them.

Kelly, who is now artistic director of London's Southbank Centre, among Britain's largest cultural institutions, shared her story of growing up at the UK-China Workshop for Senior Arts Center and Theater Management, which was held at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center in Beijing on March 3-4.

"That's not a testimony to my individual talent. That's a testimony to a philosophy that every child's imagination would become something someday," Kelly, 62, says. "In the end, art is personal. It's about using art to explain our emotions. So, as people working in the arts, we have a great mission to celebrate the imagination of people."

Prior to 1951, very few people in Britain were directly involved with the arts but they are for everyone, Kelly says. And that's how the Southbank Centre sees it, reflecting the spirit of the 1951 Festival of Britain, which turned what was then a post-war wasteland into a creative space on the banks of River Thames, with millions visiting each year.

"The place was built for people to take part in things, not just inside concert halls. We want to make all people feel welcome to drop in any time," Kelly says.

Impressed by China's new cultural infrastructure, built in the past few years, Kelly says the country holds a big potential in engaging more people in the arts, similar to Southbank's early days .

Sean Gregory, director of Creative Learning at London's Barbican Center, another venue for performing arts, with more than 1.8 million annual visitors, says education is very crucial to making changes and giving ordinary people access to the arts.