Brace yourself... get set for the unexpected

A HOMELESS man sits next to his possessions, watching intently as art installations take shape around the place he calls his own, outside a former supermarket in Central Milton Keynes. Preparations are under way for the first IF: Milton Keynes International Festival. It is 2010 and some leading public figures in Milton Keynes alongside UK arts and culture leaders are on site to watch as the vision for the Festival slowly, inexorably becomes reality.

“I fondly remember the first Festival,” says its founding director Monica Ferguson, Chief Executive and Artistic Director of The Stables which founded and produces the Festival today. “We were delivering a lot of street performances and art installations across the city centre and a homeless man said how fantastic it all was.

“He had no roof over his head, yet he was still able to see and experience amazing things. He also offered to distribute Festival brochures to passers-by and for me that was a moment that spoke volumes about the value of putting high-quality experiential artistic projects in a public space.”

Monica and the team have been putting the finishing touches to preparations for IF: Milton Keynes International Festival 2023, the seventh to be staged in the city and a festival that has drawn more than a million visitors over its six previous incarnations.

As before, this year’s Festival takes place across Milton Keynes, in parks, public squares, commercial and retail spaces. The beating heart of the Festival, the Spiegeltent is back in Campbell Park hosting comedy, contemporary circus, cabaret, kids shows and live music. An outdoor family opera takes place in Great Linford Manor Park based on Laura Carlin’s book The Promise. Pop-up events take place in the Fred Roche Gardens, Midsummer Place and Xscape.

“This Festival is huge” says Monica, speaking fresh from a briefing to many of the 200 volunteers who will guide visitors to the installations and performances.

IF has expanded this year to accommodate some of the international artists booked for the 2020 Festival that was cancelled due to the pandemic - a lower-key Festival with mainly UK artists took place in 2021, drawing around 65,000 visitors. Raising the bar in every sense this year is the French company Gratte Ciel, performing the aweinspiring Place des Anges Feature: pages 4-5.

Preparations are extensive. Place des Anges [The Place of Angels] lasts only 40 minutes but its staging takes a week to set up and involves 28 people from the company crossing the English Channel to north Buckinghamshire. Its size and complexity is why the work has been performed only twice before in the UK; in 2012 at London’s Cultural Olympiad and at Hull’s UK Capital of Culture programme in 2016.

“Milton Keynes is a big city with big boulevards and big open spaces,” says Monica. “It needs something largescale to make a real statement about Milton Keynes being a destination festival. So many people in the industry who I look up to are in agreement that this is one of the best outdoor events you could possibly see. It’s a huge privilege to bring it to Milton Keynes and I know it will bring so much joy.”

Place des Anges will bring IF to a memorable close over two nights on July 28 and 29. But it is just one production of a fascinating and exciting programme.

Take Alter, a thoughtprovoking show in an secret woodland location by award-winning collective Kamchàtka that explores themes of migration and displacement of people. “I experienced it in France where we were transported 30 minutes or so through the mountains in the dark to the performance,” Monica recalls. “The company took us on a really emotional journey through the eyes of someone who may have been taken away from somewhere not knowing where or how their journey would end. There’s an amazing twist at the end - you come away with a memory to treasure.”

IF delivers frivolity, “quirky free family stuff that is just great fun”. But the programme also has a serious side. “Some of the projects invite people to question how they think about certain subjects, individual attitudes or social themes.

“When we were invited to see Alter, the horror unfolding in Ukraine was uppermost in my mind. I was worried it might be seen as insensitive so it was essential to go and see it. I came away thinking that it’s absolutely right that we present this now. It makes you question what you can do to help.”

A large proportion of IF is free or low cost to attend thanks to seed funding from Arts Council England and Milton Keynes Council matched by a fundraising campaign supported by individual donors, trusts and foundations, co-commissions and collaborations with business. centre:mk, has been involved with the Festival since 2010 and its headline partner since 2016. This year

Middleton Hall will stage the immersive The Place Between by Rebecca Louise Law with soundscapes by Jason Singh, an installation of preserved flowers and plant material through which visitors pass surrounded by the sounds of plants and trees captured using bio feedback technology.

Law invited locals to participate by donating flowers and helping to wire over 200,000 individual elements that make up the epic hanging garden.

“Involving local people and communities in my work is really important to me,” she says. “It makes an artwork particular to a place which I find very special.”

After the festival comes a period of debrief and analysis, paying suppliers and returning equipment, before work begins on the next edition. “It’s important to spend time reflecting during this period,” says Monica. “It builds a good foundation for work to start on the next Festival.”

Our conversation nears its end. Why should I come to IF? I ask. “Why not come? Most of it is free and you will see things that you don’t expect. There is plenty that will make you smile and lots of memories to make.”