Image Credit: Photograph of Jan Lennox, Director of Watermans Arts Centre.

Jan Lennox’s route into the arts began not in a gallery or theatre, but with a trombone on the outskirts of Liverpool. Raised among cornet and trombone players, she grew up immersed in brass-band culture – park concerts, Whit walks, Christmas carolling and a formidable sense of commitment to the collective. Music college followed, then orchestras, jazz bands and early music ensembles, before a remarkable career took her through the Almeida Theatre, Manchester’s pioneering Green Room, Arts Council England and cultural regeneration in Moss Side and Hulme.

For more than two decades, Jan has brought that belief in culture’s collective power to Watermans. Now emerging from the 2024 closure of its Brentford arts centre, the organisation is becoming something more fluid: “culture without walls”, bringing ambitious work into town centres, green spaces, pubs, temporary venues and the heart of communities. As Jan puts it, “Everything we do is driven by values, relationships and impact, not bricks and mortar.”

Bell Square in Hounslow is perhaps its purest expression: world-class outdoor performance, free to everyone. From 24-27 September, the inaugural Bell Square Calling: France brings dance, circus, roller-skating hip-hop and nine accordions into the square; on 10 October, Sadiq Ali’s Tell Me uses circus to confront HIV, stigma, identity and acceptance.

At a moment Jan describes as fractured by “instability, fragmentation and erosion of trust”, gathering strangers around art feels quietly radical.

So take her advice this week: go somewhere unfamiliar, see something you didn’t think was for you, talk about it afterwards – and ask for what you want. Sometimes, Jan reminds us, people say yes.

Before the job titles, Watermans and the decades spent making culture happen, who was the young Jan Lennox? Was there a particular place, person, performance or accidental encounter that first made the arts feel like somewhere you belonged – and what would you tell a young creative who hasn’t found their place yet?

It was brass bands up in the outskirts of Liverpool. I grew up in a family of cornet and trombone players so it was one or the other. I went with the trombone. Every spare moment was spent on whit walks, concerts in parks in the summer, ‘carolling’ on the streets in December. There was a mantra that ‘the only reason you’re not at band practice is you’re dead’ – it’s a bit extreme, and really not what I’d share with a young creative now, but it did reflect the commitment and togetherness inherent in brass bands!

I didn’t grow up in a context where I was exposed to ‘the arts’ as people think of them, but I found music as the thing I loved and it set me off on a journey through music college to orchestras, jazz bands, early music ensembles – anywhere a trombone was welcome, I was happy to go.

Advice for a young creative now? Go your own way, try lots of different things and find what you really love – you don’t need to fit into other people’s boxes. And ask people for what you want – for so many things I’ve done that I really valued, I just asked people and sometimes they said ‘yes’. People are often very happy to help you make things happen.

Image Credit: ‘The Tempest’ by Teatr Biuro Podroüzçy, performing in Bell Square back in 19 Sept 2025 Photographed by Vipul Sangoi.

Your career has taken you through orchestras, the Almeida, experimental performance, Arts Council England and cultural regeneration in Moss Side and Hulme before more than two decades at Watermans. Which experience most radically changed your idea of what culture can do?

It’s always the emotional moments that made me cry! After school, when I asked the Halle Orchestra to open up a rehearsal for young people in Hulme to come in and listen – they could not believe what they were hearing, they were utterly blown away by the sound of a full symphony orchestra. At the Green Room in Manchester, creating a really open space for queer performance when it was really starting to be a thing – audiences started coming every week, it was a safe space, like home, for so many people.

And then with Watermans, of course – so many moments. A homeless man at Bell Square saying, ‘Thank you for these events. We don’t have much pleasure in our lives, but these events are a joy for us. They make such a difference, it’s something to enjoy’.

The person with cancer who says the show was so engrossing, it made him stop thinking about cancer for an hour – for the first time in ages.

Or the young Black boy recently watching Ertza, an international dance company with two exceptional Black male dancers, starting to realise that it might be ok to dance.

It’s the small encounters every week that build the story of what culture can do, bringing people together, feeling a sense of connection with others, thinking about something differently, feeling consciously happy, reinvigorated.

It’s not one big moment of realisation but a thousand tiny stories.

Image Credit: DJ set at Bell Square.

You’ve argued that audiences aren’t “hard to reach” – sometimes the arts simply aren’t offering the right work, place or invitation. After all these years, what do you think cultural organisations still misunderstand about the people they want to reach?

I always feel that the phrase ‘hard to reach’ is frustrating and limiting. It implies the problem isn’t you, it’s something to do with them – it’s their fault that they’re not engaging with this great art that you do. I really believe that if you have an audience that you want to see your work, you have to get to know them, understand what they need from you in order to come and see your work. It’s a two-way relationship.
People often talk about how culture can break down barriers. The truth is these barriers have never gone away. In some cases, they have hardened, which is why art is still viewed by many as elitist.

Really understanding your audience, your community, helps you ensure that those barriers are not restricting access or enjoyment. And that people feel that the arts are made for and by them, that their stories are being told and celebrated, that their cultures and experiences are finding new forms of expression.

Image Credit: Film of the performance company Insectotropics performing The Conference of the Birds, in 2025 at Bell Square, part of the EU funded Artcast4D Project. Filmed by Vipul Sangoi.

Watermans has undergone an extraordinary transition since the Brentford arts centre closed in 2024. You’re now describing the organisation as “culture without walls”, working across public spaces and communities rather than being defined by a building. Has closing the building ultimately changed your own idea of what an arts centre can be – and what do you hope Watermans becomes next?

Fundamentally, Watermans is about bringing world-class arts to as many of our local communities as possible, across theatre, dance, music, new media arts and film. It’s about work, ideas, influences that challenge us, make us think differently about who we are and where we live. Arts centres are amazing facilities in their communities but there are different opportunities working outside of a building. Everything we do is driven by values, relationships and impact, not bricks and mortar. We are more adaptive now and probably more accessible as a centre of ideas, collaboration and creative energy rather than as a physical destination.

We now use multiple spaces – permanent, temporary, pop-up, borrowed and digital – to bring the arts to where people are and to widen engagement. These spaces include town centres, green spaces, temporary venues such as a spiegeltent, mobile venues such as a ‘cinema bus’ or a ‘gallery in a truck’, partnerships with suitable existing venues and online spaces.

We’ve commissioned By the Light of Our Losses, a large-scale community engagement project with Manchester-based arts studio, idontloveyouanymore. The project asks people ‘What have you lost?’ and the answers will probably range from the humorous and ‘everyday’ to the poignant and profound. Hundreds of these losses will be painted onto lightbulbs and shown together as a quite beautiful installation. We thought about where the best place might be for this installation and decided not a gallery but a pub. Here, so many people in the community will engage with it quite naturally, as a part of real life, like the losses it describes.

So going forward, we’re still dedicated to inspiring one of London’s most diverse communities through the arts – in the places where they live and gather. The concept of local is vital here – it’s about how our past, present and future reflect a multiculturalism that has roots across the planet. Local does not imply something small, insignificant and one-dimensional. It means relevant, powerful and enriched by a multitude of identities. For Watermans, that means artistic risk-taking and embracing experimentation to showcase many diverse voices.

Image Credit: La Triochka performing ‘Top Down’. Photograph by Sonia Barcet. See them perform at Bell Square on Sat 26 Sept, 1pm & 3.30pm. Info → bellsquarelondon.com

Bell Square is a wonderfully democratic proposition: ambitious international performance, completely free, in the middle of Hounslow, where somebody might encounter extraordinary art entirely by accident. What have twelve years of watching strangers become audiences there taught you about the peculiar magic of public space?

There’s something special about outdoor performance, settling down to watch a show in the open air, with an audience of people from all walks of life. This is not really anything new – street theatre has happened in public space for centuries and reached audiences who may not even think of buying a ticket to go to indoor theatre. And this makes it important because the arts are so good at telling stories – stories that can be about subjects and themes that we find quite difficult. These stories often tell of different experiences from our own, they can challenge and surprise. They can gently question what we think.

At Bell Square, we work with artists who tell stories that affect us all – especially the big stuff, about the world we’re living in now. Our audiences love these shows, they get people talking. This public square has become a space where conversations can happen, different perspectives are listened to. Over time, these artists and their stories lead to change.

It’s always important for us to remember when we are presenting events that this public space is not ‘our space’ – it’s the audience’s space, the public’s space. We, and the artists, are guests in this space.

When you are right there in the middle of this public space, sometimes it can be quite gritty, and sometimes it can be really beautiful. But people go away feeling a bit different nearly every time. Perhaps a little closer to a shared humanity.

Image Credit: Cie Les Rustines de l’Ange perform CoraSon. See them live at Bell Square on Sun 27 Sept at 2pm. Info → bellsquarelondon.com

September’s inaugural Bell Square Calling: France brings together dancing inspired by Strasbourg’s 1518 dancing plague, acrobatics exploring power and hierarchy, roller-skating hip-hop, a nine-strong accordion choir and a performance created from encounters with people in Hounslow that very day. There’s a striking thread of collectivity running through it all – why do these particular artists and ideas feel right for Britain now?

The world feels precarious right now, with so much instability, fragmentation and erosion of trust. There’s also a lot of social isolation driven by the hyper-individualism of our lives at the moment. Art which brings a thread of collectivity can be an antidote to this. These shows are about human interaction, community dialogue and the relationships we have. One of Watermans’ driving purposes is to bring communities together and art in public space particularly can help people connect with each other. We know many people come to Bell Square to see the work but also to meet and talk with others about what they just experienced together. These artists can help to reaffirm the value of collectivity when it can so easily be eroded in challenging times.

Then in October, Sadiq Ali’s Tell Me uses spectacular circus to open up conversations around HIV, stigma, identity, intimacy and acceptance. There’s something powerful about presenting work like this freely in a town square rather than safely inside a specialist cultural space. How adventurous can Bell Square be – and do you ever relish the possibility of surprising, unsettling or challenging someone who was simply passing by?

London is a particularly diverse city with many different communities, faiths and social views. We want to be inclusive and respectful and create a space where people can have more open conversations, so we certainly don’t try to shock people. The work we show, though, can definitely challenge people’s views – I think performance can often challenge people to reconsider their assumptions much more than a straight-forward debate might.

Outdoor performance also feels very direct, there aren’t the same boundaries between artist and audience that you often feel in a theatre. So if the subject matter is something that divides opinion, it can certainly challenge people’s long held views.

Because of the context of performance in public space, in a shared open space, shows like Sadiq’s can force a neighbourhood to consider its own values. Strangers are unpacking potentially uncomfortable ideas together in the moment. Discussions happen instantly on the Square post-show. But people also come back to the issues raised in a particular show in conversations with us months and even years later, so they clearly do disrupt or unsettle people’s views.

Image Credit: Cie Xuan Le perform Reflet (Reflection). See them live at Bell Square on Sat 26 Sept at 7pm. Info → bellsquarelondon.com

After a lifetime spent discovering artists and thinking about where culture belongs, what are you still searching for? And give us three cultural places in London that mean something personally to you – anywhere from a grand institution to a tiny room, peculiar corner or public space – and tell us why we should go.

I always want to see and spend time with artists who really have something to say. I don’t want to present work that just ‘looks nice’ – I want it to say something about our world, our lives, I want it to bring ideas, open up new thinking, or help me understand other people’s thinking.

Get over to Bell Square. It’s rooted in what London is all about. And you get top international shows for free. Every other weekend.

Whilst you’re there, head over to Thakers, the South Asian café just off Hounslow High Street. They give you vegetarian soul food, vegetarian awesomeness. Any time of the day and night, it sets you right every time.

I will go anywhere to see a good show – a theatre, club, the street, a back alley, a field, wherever. But you can rely on Rich Mix to always have something interesting on – music, film, performance, always makes you think.

Find Jan Lennox at watermans.org.uk

Upcoming events →

Bell Square Calling: France
A festival of outdoor performance
Thu 24 – Sun 27 September 2026
Info → watermans.org.uk

Bell Square 2026: Sadiq Ali Company
Tell Me
Sat 10 Oct 2026
Info → watermans.org.uk