Southbank Centre, the UK's largest centre for the arts, a charity on London's South Bank that runs the Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and more.
Southbank Centre calls itself the UK's largest centre for the arts. Its 13-acre site on the River Thames in central London is home to the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery, as well as the National Poetry Library, restaurants and bars. It runs about 3,300 events a year, and more than half of them are free. More than 8,000 artists perform on its stages. The centre is home to six resident orchestras, which makes it one of the country's largest centres for classical music.
The centre's vision is to be the world's most exciting place for the arts. Its mission is to make a difference to artists, audiences and communities through its programming and spaces, and it lists three values: creating welcoming spaces, making experiences together and sparking new thinking. Its strategy has three pillars: Creative Spaces, Creative Engine, which brings artists and people together and supports wellbeing, and Creative Enablers, which covers building a skilled workforce. The site dates back to the 1951 Festival of Britain, and the centre says the principle that the arts should be for everyone still shapes its artistic vision.
The Southbank Centre is a single, walkable site in London SE1. A visitor-guide description says it receives more than 11 million visitors a year, and the centre's own page puts it at about 11 million visitors and 3 million ticket buyers. The two pages differ on the size of the site (11 acres against 13) and the number of events (4,000 against 3,300), so we have used the centre's own figures. Its festivals include the London Literature Festival, Meltdown, Multitudes and the Imagine Children's Literature Festival, and it hosts the BAFTA Film, TV and Games Awards and the BFI London Film Festival.
It is a registered charity run by Southbank Centre Limited, whose ten Governors act as charity trustees. Day-to-day decisions sit with an Executive led by Chief Executive Elaine Bedell OBE, alongside an Artistic Director, a Chief Operating Officer, and directors of Audiences, Development, and People and Culture. That last job title suggests a dedicated team looking after staff, though we did not read a description of the working culture. Its learning work includes talent and skills programmes and a schools programme called Inspire.
An arts centre of this size depends on many specialists. Programmers and producers plan the music, dance, literature and visual arts seasons; technical teams look after lighting, sound, staging and the building; the Hayward Gallery needs curators and installation staff; and other teams run box office, front of house, catering, marketing, digital, fundraising, finance and people services. If you like live events and the feeling of a busy public place, working behind the scenes at a venue like this could suit you. Southbank Centre's website lists current vacancies.
Website: www.southbankcentre.co.uk
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