Southbank artistic director: Arts sector needs to embrace the virtual world

Southbank Centre artistic director Mark Ball has highlighted the need for the arts sector to “go virtual” in order to engage with younger audiences.

It comes as he announces a new season of work, with highlights including a virtual music performance on an online game platform, a new orchestral arts festival and a three-year associate artists scheme.

Gaming platform Roblox will host the new virtual music show, which is launching in summer 2025. Developed in collaboration with metaverse studio Karta Games, it will invite gamers aged eight to 11 to make and perform music.

“The metaverse is as important for culture as any other space,” Ball told The Stage. “So many of today’s artists are working much more fluently and openly, and audiences today are seeking boundary-defining experiences that are entirely fresh.

“As the digital transforms the ways in which we make, communicate, present and platform things, the virtual world itself becomes just as valid a place to make and present culture. Gaming platforms are increasingly where young people we know are spending a lot of time… making and building things and communities.

“If you want to influence young people and get them to engage in the arts, increasingly, you have to accept that you have to take work to them.”

The Southbank has also launched a three-year associate artists programme, playing host to six creatives that Ball praised for their “sense of adventure and collaboration across art forms”.

They are Olivier-nominated Cabaret choreographer Julia Cheng, composers Conor Mitchell and Cassie Kinoshi, multidisciplinary artist Ivan Michael Blackstock, musician, producer and performing artist Love Ssega and author Max Porter.

Orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Chineke! and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra are also set to collaborate with artists across hip hop, spoken-word poetry and electronic music as part of a new festival from April 23 to May 3, 2025.

The Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall will be turned into a “three-dimensional instrument” using more than 80 speakers concealed within the tunnels and vents surrounding the auditorium. Following a year of testing, the sound system, entitled Concrete Voids, will debut with an artist commissioning programme in spring 2025.

Following its pilot bid to tackle skills shortages backstage, Southbank’s Technical Academy will return in January 2025, offering a three-week training programme for 25 participants over 18 who have “little or no experience working in technical production”.

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