A Festival of Fringe in Milton Keynes

"The birth of the long awaited and long needed Milton Keynes International Festival in 2010, brought a complete sea change to the new city." 

How did I get here?!! Director of Milton Keynes Festival Fringe 2012. It was a bit by accident but when I looked around, all I could see were people around me who seemed to need me to fight their corner, to represent the unseen and emerging.  

When I tested the temperature it seemed to me that the Arts community in Milton Keynes was fed up. Tired of the warring factions and empire builders, fed up of the silo mentality which grew up organically in a frontier town where historically, the Council had little centralised power and if you had an initiative you hung on to it like the mast of a sinking ship - every arts organisation for themselves. 

Terrible Shamen, Fringe performance (photo by Legge)

 The birth of the long awaited and long needed Milton Keynes International Festival in 2010, brought a complete sea change to the new city. This ambitious outward looking vessel on the landscape brought about a call to arms from those open minded and metropolitan enough to see the opportunity for the arts in Milton Keynes to 'up it's game'. This could and can only be done collectively in my view.

 
Suddenly it was time for working together, for connected programming, a time to nurture the emerging talent and bring them into the big tent to feed the old roots. The voices in the wind were calling...'collaborate or face extinction!'

Partly this was down to survival of individuals in the financial climate and a need to respond to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad projects, also a defence against the 'culture commute to London', a disease which exists in many places. But among the collective which became 'Milton Keynes, Summer of Culture' this year, there were some genuine team players who could see the bigger picture, 'for the greater good'. I wonder if this was also a symptom of a young city which is finally maturing?

Shake n Speare, one of the 6 Beach hut commissions

It was obvious, what was needed was a broad tent so that no body felt excluded but a tent which could also provide a system of appropriate placing of work; less of a 'curation' role and more of a 'facilitating, staging and framing' role, so that everything could be included without quality being compromised or without, what has been described as, the 'bun fight' that goes on at other Fringe festivals. 

I think I spent 2 months in meetings just listening to people, trying to gauge the climate. One of the first things I did was to sketch a framework together, something which all art forms could find a place within and which provided opportunities for all levels of professionalism and quality to find an appropriate artistic platform. It included open entry artist markets, open mic and busking, to commissioned installation and performance. There were also some invited artists who created links and relevance to the overarching themes. This framework provided a useful working document which was circulated for the arts community to respond and contribute to. I was also able to present this working plan to the guardians of the so called 'public spaces' otherwise known as shopping centres, the various retail consortium's which seem to have mushroomed up in the UK with no national strategy or any overall body to answer to...Always the profits over the prophets and the answer always seems to be 'it's what the people want', (just like they want trash TV and junk food)...oops I'm ranting. 

Walking with Giants, community parade produced by Festive Road

The other thing which I did early on was to talk to Monica Ferguson, Milton Keynes International Festival Director and Chief Executive of The Stables. It was important to find out what kind of Fringe would support the International Festival, how a Fringe could complement the Festival and what we would call it? I also had regular chats with Bill Gee, the International Festival's Creative Producer, mostly to ensure that our programme content was truly providing a 'fringe' to the International Festival and that there were no serious clashes. 

From the point of view of the International Festival and others in Milton Keynes, the growth of a healthy, thriving, locally/regional focused Festival Fringe, is of great concern, as, without one, there is always the more negative contingency of the local arts community, the 'moaners on the sidelines' who make life difficult. There is always a need for somewhere fringey, edgy and seemingly 'outsider' to focus creative energies. This allows the International Festival to focus on International horizons but it also provides a supportive space for new and experimental work to develop and get showcased.

Cycle cinema, produced by MK Independent Cinema

The MK Festival Fringe 2012 was awarded the London 2012 Inspire mark and is also signed up to the Greener Festival Awards' scheme. The themes and strands that ran through the Fringe were an attempt to make links with the Cultural Olympic events such as Godiva Awakes visiting MK, (hence the giants parade and the focus on cycling), The Boat Project, (hence the beach hut commissions, Dip your Toe Bathing machines on tour from Brighton Fringe and the wave paintings of Alexandra Leadbeater).  But the strands also reflected the interests of the people who coordinated and pulled the whole festival together -the team, many of whom were volunteers. And my particular interest in ecology and recycling projects gave the programme a strong 'green' flavour.

The programme -all 220 different audience opportunities; including live performance, street theatre, dance, music, visual art exhibitions and participatory workshops... which were on offer over the 19 days of the Festival Fringe, can be found in the full Festival Fringe brochure which was designed by Allan Davies.

Next years MK Festival Fringe will be taking place 19 -21 July 2013 -get it in the diary now!