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

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."