The 30th edition of Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival kicks off tomorrow (12th June), with Little Simz curating the line up. Wonderland get the exclusive scope from Jane Beese, the festival’s decades-deep heartbeat. 

One of London’s most quintessential cultural hubs and the UK’s largest arts space, Southbank Centre is a must visit for wannabe cool kids and infuriating tourists alike. Halfway through their chiseled yearly programme sits Meltdown Festival, Southbank’s annual performative extravaganza that is curated by a different musical maven each annum. Previous noteworthy names include: David Bowie, Patti Smith, John Peel, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker… the list goes on. 

This year marks Meltdown’s 30th anniversary. How does one celebrate this extra special birthday? Enlist one of the UK’s very finest, of course. Fresh from the release of her awe-inspiring sixth studio album Lotus, rapper, musician and actor Little Simz brings her perfectly-rounded musical compass to the party. 

The London polymath has put together one hell of a line up, which kicks off tomorrow with a special entry from legend of the streets Mike Skinner, and concludes transcendently with a headline showcase from Simz herself, accompanied by Chineke! Orchestra, the Southbank Centre’s resident orchestra. 

Other guests across the festival line up — which runs from 12th – 22nd June — include grime connoisseur Ghetts, R&B gem Mahalia, folk stunner Kara Jackson, pop riser Lola Young and electronic revolutionary James Blake. Elsewhere, in a reflection of Simz continual endeavours in supporting rising talent, the free programme features Works in Progress: Speak Easy and At Your Own Pace — one-off activities for young London creatives. 

Alongside Simz at the heart of Meltdown Festival 2025 is the Southbank Centre’s Head of Contemporary Music, Jane Beese. An ever present in Meltdown since 2000, Jane has, arguably, one of the coolest jobs in the world. She has worked closely throughout the years with the festival’s mouthwatering mosaic of curators, constructing programs of live music, performance and workshops that rival anything across London and the wider European cultural circumference. 

Placing her expertise, wisdom and philanthropy at the heart of everything Southbank Centre does, Jane is an modern icon who hides away from the spotlight. Below, in a Wonderland exclusive interview, she discusses working with Simz, her favourite ever collaborators, 30 years of Meltdown, and the biggest challenges moving forward.

Read the exclusive interview…

Firstly Jane, congratulations on this year’s Meltdown Festival. Why did Little Simz feel like the right creative to spearhead this year’s curation? 

Thank you — this year’s a big one for us. With this being the 30th Meltdown, it was important to work with someone who could both honour the spirit of the festival and push it somewhere new. Little Simz was right at the top of our list, as undoubtedly one of the most interesting artists around at the moment. Her vision is bold, uncompromising and has a radically fresh sense of perspective. Simz just felt like a perfect match for Meltdown. As this year’s curator, she’s bringing deep artistic integrity and a real sense of generational impact to the festival, which couldn’t be more exciting.

How was the process of working alongside Simz to put together this incredible line up? 

Every Meltdown is shaped by the artist at the centre of it, and the process always takes its own unique rhythm. At the beginning, we really don’t know what direction the festival will take and it’s a truly collaborative process with the curator that gets us there.

With Simz, it was clear early on that young people needed to be at the heart of the festival – both on the stage, in the audience and involved in participatory events. We took things from there, really, looking into the names – going through the address book, so to speak – and deciding how we’ll construct the festival lineup. We run the thoughts and names past Simz and her team, and are in touch every step of the way. Slowly but surely, the festival starts to come together.

It’s a long process…well over a year from the moment we first extend a curator invite through to opening night.

Who are you most excited to check out? What are your personal standouts? 

That’s always an impossible question….can I say everything? Obviously, Simz’ closing show with our resident orchestra Chineke! is going to be a real high point. Hearing her music reimagined with a live orchestra will be an unmissable moment, and the kind of on-stage collaboration that makes the Southbank Centre particularly special. 

I’m also really excited for a gig from the Queen of Afrobeats Tiwa Savage, which should be great fun, and to wander around the Southbank seeing all the other incredible stuff that is free to join: outdoor DJ takeovers, open dance battles, sculpture and writing workshops. It’s all part of that festival-meets-youth-club spirit Simz has tapped into so well.

Down the years the festival has seen the likes of Yoko Ono, Massive Attack, David Bowie and Patti Smith as curators. What do you think draws these generation-defining names to work with and be affiliated with Southbank Centre? 

In a nutshell, I think the festival offers a pretty unique kind of creative freedom. Meltdown is always an invitation to go deep: we ask the curator to make the Southbank Centre their creative playground and to dream up something uncompromising and bold to make use of our site and resources in whatever way they want to. 

Every year, our curators run with that brief. When David Bowie curated his Meltdown in 2002, he had a strong interest in visual art at the time, so we worked with his team to create a gallery space in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall. With Nile Rodgers on the other hand, his vision was very much a joyous party spirit, which turned one of our foyers into a Studio 54 club night, into the early hours of the morning.

The role of the Meltdown curator is more than headlining a festival: it’s ultimately an invite to artists at the very top of their game to let their imaginations run free, and establish a creative legacy within the rich tapestry of incredible artists who keep this festival exhilarating and wholly unexpected.

How did you personally find yourself as Head of Contemporary Music for Southbank Centre? What’s your journey been to this pinnacle? 

I began my career in music in booking agencies, working up from receptionist to co-founding the booking agency 13 Artists. It was a fascinating, fast-paced world but one thing I found frustrating when I started as an agent’s assistant – apart from the obvious glass ceiling at that time – was working on events right up until the day of the show and then having little involvement on the day. 

A move into music venues solved that one for me, when I joined the Southbank Centre in 2000, first as Event Co-ordinator. It was from there that I became Head of Contemporary Music, making the most brilliant memories – too many to recall – while working with artists like James Lavelle, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Yoko Ono and PJ Harvey on Meltdown. 

After a 15-year tenure, I went to the Roundhouse and then onto Manchester International Festival as the Head of Music at each – two incredible organisations at the heart of the UK’s rich music history and the development of the scene.

And now, I’m back at the Southbank Centre at the helm of Meltdown again! Working on each iteration of Meltdown is always a different experience from the ones before, and always allows us to bring new ideas to the table.

Meltdown celebrates its 30th anniversary this summer, and you’ve been working on the festival since 2000 – how do you reflect on its progression through the years? 

For 30 years now, Meltdown has built a reputation for breaking down boundaries between musical genres, between audiences, and for inviting the artistic pioneers of our time to bring their vision to life at the Southbank Centre each summer. It’s always been a deeply collaborative process with the chosen curator. Over the years, as we’ve found increasingly unexpected ways to make use of our multi-venue site and be more experimental with the programme, I think audiences have responded to that sense of expecting the unexpected.

People arrive with real curiosity. They might discover new artists in a lineup which has gigs from Tiwa Savage and Ghetts, alongside James Blake, Mahalia and Lola Young, and then find themselves wandering into a writing workshop or a whole day of outdoor DJ sets on our riverside terrace. The way the programme is curated naturally invites surprise and exploration. I don’t think there’s another festival quite like it.

The free, unticketed events programme has become an increasingly central part of Meltdown – and of our broader work at the Southbank Centre – which I think reflects a shift in how people want to engage with culture: more openly, more spontaneously, and in ways that feel accessible to all. Meltdown’s spirit has evolved into something that’s just as much about participation and unexpected discovery – offering a kind of cultural playground – as it is about a headline lineup. That sense of creative participation alongside unmissable performances is what makes it truly special.

What have been your favourite memories of your time working on Meltdown? Any standout collaborators for you? 

There are so many, and so many artists I feel truly privileged to say I worked closely with – Bowie, for example. The work on Patti Smith, David Byrne, James Lavelle and Yoko Ono’s have definitely been personal highlights. Yoko Ono, our 2013 Meltdown curator, is just a remarkable artist and woman. She is such a generous, gracious collaborator, truly invested in the vision of the festival and what she could bring to it. Working with her was a joy.

What are the biggest challenges you currently face, with Meltdown and the Southbank Centre as a wider entity? 

The current cost of living crisis affects many sectors, and the arts and live entertainment sector is no exception to this. When the state of the economy is affecting so many, our public programme of free events is more important now than ever. Meltdown can’t become an exclusive festival for the wealthy, so finding ways to work around the financial challenges of the current climate and still deliver a world-class, boundary-pushing festival is at the heart of our thinking, but is definitely a challenge. It requires a lot of balance throughout the year, careful assessment of how we budget for shows and how events that are highly successful commercially can help support more artistically adventurous programming and keep it free or more affordable.

What else is exciting for you in 2025?

There’s some great stuff coming up! Later in the summer, we have a season of music, literature and dance called Dance Your Way Home, which will transform the Southbank Centre into a dance floor: a tribute to nightclubs, Irish dance halls, street parties and how they bring communities together. 

After that, Suede will be taking over later this year with a whole programme of events, including a major Royal Festival Hall gig, a rare acoustic show, and a collaboration with Paraorchestra. And I’m really looking forward to a Harlem Renaissance project led by Tomorrow’s Warriors. That one’s going to be something truly special.