The Convener
The room, the network and the deal, brings the right people together.
Jude Kelly is quintessentially The Convener. Her leadership philosophy rests on creating shared spaces, festivals, dialogues and cross-community gatherings where people self-determine their own transformation, and she explicitly rejects top-down prescription.
“I'm also saying that people who would never call themselves a feminist or aren't fighting for black rights matter. Let them all come in. Don't turn into a woke club, or just that word, onto myself now. Please let's not turn the world into a group of people who are standing on a pedestal saying we know what's right.”
“Well, because there were so few women playwrights. I mean, obviously, education has always been a contested space for women. If you just switch it over from theatre for a minute to visual arts, women weren't even allowed to study the anatomy until very recently. They weren't allowed to go to art school.”
“I don't think we have those shared values yet. If you say to a family, would you like to have an unjust family? Would you like to have a tyrannical family? Would you like to have a violent family? Would you like to have a chaotic or dysfunctional family? Most people will say, of course not.”
“Somebody who was alert to the consequences of injustice for everybody. And I still feel that, you know, I mean, I'm a woman, so it makes sense that I fight for the justice for other women. But I'm also a mother of a son and the grandmother of a grandson.”
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “Jude Kelly: what feminism looks like in the age of 'strong men' politics”
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