Mark Ball on His Journey to Southbank Centre and Harry Styles’ Meltdown Festival Leadership

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'It's fascinating, through Meltdown, to understand what drives those artists and why they're so brilliant'

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As a part of Southbank Centre ’s 75th anniversary celebrations, the organization has brought back Meltdown , “the world’s longest-running artist-curated musical festival,” which has previously been curated by artists including David Byrne , Patti Smith and Yoko Ono . This year’s artist, Harry Styles , is bringing his “iconic self-expression and creative curiosity” to the festival with a range of performances, including a headlining performance with the Jules Buckley Orchestra on 16 June.

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Recently, we had the chance to speak with Mark Ball, the Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre . We discussed how he first got started in the arts industry and what led him to the Centre, the history of the Meltdown music festival and what it has been like working with Harry Styles as the artist curator this year.

How did you first get started in the arts industry?

Well, I started in a very different type of role! My very first job in the arts industry was as an administrator, which was a catch-all job title for somebody who did a bit of everything - from finance to tour bookings, to marketing, to payroll - for a company called Geese Theater, who actually originated in the US, and then had a UK branch, and they worked exclusively in the prison system. So my first job, I was the very first administrator of that company. A lot of the time, I was touring with the company, and going down to various jails and high security institutions across the UK. We were running genre workshops and setting up theatrical productions inside prisons, which was a great start to working in the arts.

And what made you want to be Artistic Director at the Southbank Centre ?

Being Artistic Director of Southbank Centre came after thirty years of working in the art sector, and that slightly modest start working in a prison theatre company. I, over the years, started to work in bigger and bigger institutions. I'd always loved the Southbank Centre . I'd worked with it as a partner in previous roles. And what I love about the Southbank Centre is that it's a truly democratic institution. It was set up to be a people's palace of culture in 1951 after the war, a place that would bring the public together to look at the ideas and the art that would define our future. And its architecture is really interesting because we have huge amounts of public space, - our buildings are ⅔ public space, ⅓ auditoria, which is almost the exact opposite of what you would normally find! And what that enables is that we're a gathering place. That's one of the things that I loved about the Southbank Centre , and why I really wanted to lead the organization artistically. It has a very special place in the UK landscape of it being that cultural people's palace, where there's no distinction between the amazing work of our resident orchestras inside the Royal Festival Hall and the skate park that we've held on the site for fifty years, which is the epicentre of city skateboarding.

What goes into the role of Artistic Director?

So we have a huge programme of work. We program across four venues: the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room, the Hayward Gallery and a huge amount of outdoor space, and we program across visual arts, contemporary and classical music, literature, performance and dance. We've got a huge education program. And, as Artistic Director, I have responsibility for the delivery of all of that programming. But - and this is important - it would be impossible to deliver the depth of that programme as a single person, so I oversee and support a group of amazing heads - a Director of Visual Arts, a Head of Classical Music, a Head of Contemporary Music, a Head of Performance and Dance. My job really is to allow them to programme within a framework that is coherent to set the vision for the organisation, to set our direction. We do almost 4,000 events a year, and that has to be driven by all of those heads who below them have teams as well. So really, my job is to define the Southbank Centre . Where are we going? How can the artistic programme exemplify that? And if it doesn't, what are new things that we can do that lend life to what the vision means artistically?

Can you tell us a bit about Meltdown and its history?

Yeah! So Meltdown is a very special festival. We believe it's the world's longest-running artist-curated festival. We're now in our 31st edition, and it started from the idea of, wouldn't it be interesting to find a way of getting an artist to share their passions, to share their record collection with the public? To centre an artist and understand through an artist curation who their influences were, what drives them, what their passions are, mostly in music - though some curators have also chosen other non-musical forms like performance and dance. So we select an artist - nearly always a musician - and they select artists who they want to program across all three of our venues for 10 days, so we have about 30 shows, and we have also a big public program, and you know, the festival is there, as I say, to shine a light on what makes an artist tick, and to find out more about, about an artist who you might think that you know in one particular way through their music, but this really, this really allows an artist to showcase themselves in a very multidimensional way, and you know, over those 31 editions, we've had incredible artists - David Bowie , Chaka Khan , Grace Jones , Patti Smith , Christine and the Queens, Yoko Ono . It's been an absolutely extraordinary range of artists, and it's fascinating, through Meltdown , to understand what drives those artists and why they're so brilliant.

What goes into selecting the artist who curates Meltdown ?

It's a bit like coming up with your dream soccer team line-up. We always start with a group of names. We want to really respect and admire them as musicians, and we want to select artists who feel that they've got something to say - they're really curious about the world and music. When I got here, Meltdown had a very long history of curating brilliant artists and putting them at the centre of the curation, but I was very struck by the fact that the organisation and Meltdown hadn't really given that platform to younger artistic voices. So in the four and a half years I've been here, I've been really determined to do that. In my second year, I had Christine and the Queens, last year we had Little Simz . It's really fascinating for younger audiences to understand what drives their idols and the artists that they are fans of, because those artists themselves are informed by huge and varied influences, and often have surprising passions that you really want to expose at Meltdown . So in terms of the process, it's really wanting to find people who are curious about music, who have something to say beyond their own music and have a level of generosity, kindness and support for other artists that they want to platform.

What has it been like working with Harry Styles this year to curate Meltdown ?

It's been amazing! It's been a really wonderful experience. As I said, one of the reasons that we do this is that we want to show you a multi-dimensional perspective to an artist. Harry is very present in the world, but people mostly know him from One Direction and then being a solo artist, but we knew there was something more to him. We knew that he was often driven by some quite unusual interests. The Harry's House album, for example, was really inspired by a very famous, but quite experimental Japanese electronic musician. We wanted to expose more of those stories. And this year is our 75th anniversary year, so we really wanted to go big with someone who was really globally present, but also focused on a younger artist, because we wanted this whole year to be a celebration of young people in the future.

So Harry was a great choice, and working with him and his team has been an absolute dream. He's been really involved in the selection of all of the works, big and small. He's not just put together a music programme - he's helped put together a public programme of photography, of talks with people like the artist Tracey Emin. But also, if you showed the Meltdown lineup to most people without saying who the curator is, it would take them several guesses to realise it was Harry, and that's one of the things which is great. It gives you a surprising insight into the artists. And, I have to say, working with Harry and the team has been a dream, because we've been able to reveal that, but also because he is so supportive and generous to other artists. He wants to use music to build communities, to bring people together.

As I said at the beginning of the interview, the Southbank Centre is a convening space that's brought people together, often from different backgrounds, to have shared experiences and, through those shared experiences, to connect through their common humanity as audiences. It's no coincidence that Harry's tour is called Together Together , and the chorus of the “Aperture” song is, “We belong together.” He is clearly someone who's passionate about using music to build connection between people and to build community in the room, and that is so aligned with the values of the Southbank Centre , so it's been wonderful to work with an artist who's so aligned to our values. So he's been an absolute dream to work with, and he's got a brilliant team around him as well.

What has it been like seeing the response to this year's festival?

It's been wonderful. It's our 75th anniversary, and we wanted an artist who we felt could do justice to that huge, important anniversary, and Harry definitely does that. The reaction in the media has been phenomenal, and people have been really excited, and you know, I think people have been really excited about discovering another, another side to Harry's, that these other interests, whether they're people who don't, would not necessarily call themselves Harry and style fans, but have come to respect and admire him to the through the curatorial choices and selections that he's making, or his more kind of established on base, who was starting to discover other musicians to his passions and interests, and you know all of that is brilliant.

Do you have any particular events that you're looking forward to at Meltdown this year?

Well, it goes without saying that his concert next week is going to be amazing. Working with the Jules Buckley Orchestra, to orchestrate some of his music in a venue, which is, comparatively to anything else that he's doing, a really intimate space . . . To have that intimate connection with him, have his music arranged and orchestrated in a brilliant way, is going to give a whole new insight into his existing body of work, and it's going to be a thrilling experience for people in the room. But also some really surprising choices! On the last Sunday, there's a huge DJ takeover with an all-female lineup of mostly techno DJs. Again, inspired by Harry's passions, the club music that is going to be wonderful. So it's going to be amazing.

What do you hope audiences take away from Meltdown ?

Two things. Firstly, that they take away an understanding of an artist that's more developed, richer, nuanced, and that really allows audiences to understand the complexity of influences, passions and personality that an artist might have that you don't always get represented in the

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Interview-Mark-Ball-on-Harry-Styles-and-MELTDOWN-at-Southbank-Centre-20260614)._