This July, IF: Milton Keynes International Festival will return to the city’s parks, green spaces, public squares and retail destinations with 21 days of eclectic entertainment. The 2021 festival will be a little longer, to allow plenty of time and space for everyone to enjoy the events. And the programme has been carefully curated to reflect the extraordinary times we’re living through.
There’ll be a mix of open-air live music, dance, and performance, with joyful and free family events. You can expect transformative site-specific installations and pop-up performances along with a digital programme of concerts and interviews recorded live from The Stables. Enjoy pop-up robotic woodpeckers, a moving breathing walk-through sculpture and a sea of silk flags. Plus, the monumental Earth and Moon sculptures will come together for the first time.
Get ready for a slapstick picnic, an outdoor audio trail and an immersive sci-fi dance show in a shipping container…
What to see at the Amphitheatre
Slapstick Picnic: The Importance of Being Earnest NEW
Saturday 17th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Amphitheatre
Slapstick Picnic (from the creators of the Handlebards) bring a marvellously silly new production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to the Amphitheatre. Two rather dashing entertainers take on Wilde’s classic play of manners, affairs and handbags – with added culinary capers. Tickets cost £10 for this family friendly theatre show.
Gandini Juggling: Smashed2
Sunday 18th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Amphitheatre
Featuring 80 oranges, seven watermelons and nine performers, Smashed2 is juggling reinvented. Expect plenty of explosive fruit and slow-motion comedy, performed with meticulous unison and split-second timing. Inspired by the work of the great choreographer Pina Bausch, Gandini Juggling combines elements of her gestural choreography with intricate patterns and cascades of solo and ensemble juggling. Tickets cost from £3 to £12 for this family friendly circus show.
Stand-up in The Park with Russell Kane, Rich Hall and Angela Barnes
Friday 23rd July 2021 at the Campbell Park Amphitheatre
This night of comedy features award-winner and TV regular Russell Kane, best known for the BBC Sounds podcasts, Evil Genius and Boy’s Don’t Cry. Plus, BBC4 documentarian Rich Hall and social care worker-turned comedian Angela Barnes. Tickets cost £27.50 for this comedy show.
Orchestra for the Earth: For the Trees
Saturday 24th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Amphitheatre
Orchestra for the Earth brings together some of the finest young professional musicians, all committed to connecting audiences around the world with music and nature. The orchestra highlights climate change and the natural world. Here they collaborate with environmental charity Trees of Music to highlight how deforestation in Brazil is decimating the population of Pernambuco trees; the source of wood used to make bows for stringed instruments. Tickets cost from £11 to £22.50 for this unique musical collaboration.
Fascinating festival dance shows
Frauke Requardt & David Rosenberg: Future Cargo
Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th July 2021 at The Point Car Park
Future Cargo is an immersive sci-fi dance show set within a 40ft shipping container. A truck arrives from an other-worldly location, loaded with a mystery shipment. And, as the sides roll up, a strange and unstoppable process is set in motion. Enjoy a large-scale dance spectacle whilst simultaneously eavesdropping via binaural headphones on the sounds of the dramas inside the container. Tickets cost from £3 to £12 for this quirky spectacular.
Jeanefer Jean-Charles: Black Victorians
Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th July 2021 at the Peace Pagoda, North Willen Lake
This show is inspired by an exhibition of black people in Victorian photographic portraits, hidden for over 100 years. Jeanefer Jean-Charles’ Black Victorians tells some of the many untold stories of black people in British history. Her choreography for five black dancers, in Marsha Roddy’s boldly-reimagined Victorian costumes against African prints, challenges our expectations of what a Victorian person might look like — exploring a complex but often forgotten black presence in pre-Windrush Britain. Tickets are free for this fascinating dance show.
Live music and immersive experiences
The Stables Sessions: Live On The Bulbfield Stage
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Bulbfield
Live On The Bulbfield Stage is a weekend of open-air, live music performances in Campbell Park. These Stables Sessions put a spotlight on new sounds, emerging talent and unsigned artists. Catch Lizzy Hardingham, Anna Hester, Candi’s Dog, Manny & The Coloured Sky and 4th Labyrinth on the Saturday. And Hannah Scott, Smith & Brewer, Joe Miles, Inlak’esh and Fred’s House on the Sunday. Tickets for the musical weekend are free.
The Stables Sessions: Virtually Live
Broadcasting online (check on the festival website for times and dates)
Virtually Live is a series of concerts and interviews recorded live at The Stables. The line-up includes Emma McGrath, Hannah Scott, Hope in High Water, Jally Kebba Susso, and Steve Winch & The Inception. This online event is free to view.
Drake Music: Planted Symphony
Wednesday 14th to Sunday 18th July 2021 at Campbell Park’s Canalside
Planted Symphony is an immersive music experience in nature. It’s an accessible and interactive outdoor audio trail through the Canalside’s green spaces. You can download the Planted Symphony app and enter a narrative which leads you through the space, transformed with installations. Hear a six-part composition, songs and stories, which are triggered via GPS as you go. Drake’s Music’s Planted Symphony includes BSL videos, audio description and resting points. And for D/deaf and hard of hearing audiences, there will be Subpacs available (book in advance) which translate sound into vibration and over-ear headphones, compatible with hearing aids.
Family focus weekend shows
On Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July, there will be a weekend of free daytime pop-up performances and drop-in workshops for all the family at Campbell Park.
Rachel Wright and Cathy Ebbels: Flag Making Workshops
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at Campbell Park, by the Milton Keynes Rose
These are sessions for children and adults, inspired by the MK Mandalas flag project — one of the installations at this year’s festival. So you can make your own flag and take it home. Workshops will be run by the project manager, artist and tutor Rachel Wright, and artist and tutor Cathy Ebbels. It’s free but you’ll need to book a place.
Theatre of Widdershins: Treasure Chest Tales
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Labyrinth
A popular festival stalwart, Theatre of Widdershins returns with a new compendium of enchanting fairy tales. Stories are told in the inimitable Widdershins style, with fantastical props, music and charming puppetry. They’ll be performing The Princess & The Pea, The Hare & The Hedgehog, Nanooshka Queen of the Goats and Ug, Bug and Dug amongst other tales. Tickets are free for these family shows.
Mimbre: Lifted
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at Campbell Park’s Embankment Stage
Created with guest choreographers Yi-Chun Liu, HURyCAN and Gary Clarke, this captivating performance brings new approaches to Mimbre’s trademark all-female acrobatics. Lifted is a series of funny, poetic and surprising moments, exploring what it means when one body is carried by another. Tickets for this dance-circus show are free.
And more quirky events for the weekend
Gobbledegook Theatre: Cloudscapes
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at Campbell Park’s City Gardens
Cloudscapes is an intimate installation, inviting you to lie down on cushions for an outdoor cloud-gazing auditorium. Perched high on a stepladder, performer and creator Lorna Rees oversees the event, gently encouraging her listeners to look up and contemplate how, like humans, the clouds are constantly changing. Tickets for this quirky installation are free.
Dizzy O’Dare: The Giant Red Balloon Show
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Labyrinth
Dizzy O’Dare channels the iconic Milton Keynes red balloon (from the 1970s adverts for the garden city) with a 1980s soundtrack. Non-stop balloon sculptures, a high-energy comic performance, audience participation and a giant red balloon, create an entertaining show for the whole family. And tickets are free.
Kapow: Grow
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at Campbell Park’s Embankment Stage
Grow is described as a comment on humanity and a comedy gardening show combined. It’s a playful and touching celebration of the power of nature to take over spaces and grow through the cracks. Smart, skillful and engaging, Kapow’s two dancers transform variously into weeds, seeds and beautiful sunflowers leaving you feeling uplifted and inspired. Tickets for this dance and circus show are also free.
2Faced Dance: Power
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th July 2021 at the Campbell Park Embankment Stage
Power looks at the uneasy relationship with authority and control, in a fearless new dance production, choreographed by Alleyne Dance. How does power seduce, shift and shape our behaviour? Expect an explosive mix of contemporary dance, kathak, circus skills and hip hop. Again, tickets are free.
Quirky and unique festival installations
Anna Berry: Breathing Room
Saturday 10th to Friday 30th July 2021 at Queen’s Court in centre:mk
Breathing Room is a kinetic installation created by UK artist and Milton Keynes resident Anna Berry. Known for creating socially and politically conscious work in non-gallery environments, Berry has created an illuminated tunnel. It’s lined with thousands of delicate paper-like cones that move and breathe. Walk through its pulsing interior in a multi-sensory and immersive experience. Its mesmeric movement is generated by the ingenious mechanics of a sculptural exterior created from found objects. And it’s free to visit.
Marco Barotti: The Woodpeckers
Saturday 10th to Friday 30th July 2021 at locations throughout Milton Keynes City Centre
Sonic and media artist Marco Barotti, specialises in interventions in both urban and natural surroundings. Throughout the festival, The Woodpeckers will pop up in different city centre locations, attached by magnets to street signs, lamps, and other metal components of the urban landscape. The robotic birds transform the invisible signals from mobile and wireless technology into a constantly changing composition of rhythmic beats tapped out on the city’s architecture. Look out for this free installation.
Yara + Davina: Arrivals + Departures
Saturday 10th to Friday 30th July 2021 in City Square, at the junction of Silbury Boulevard and Saxon Gate, outside centre:mk
Yara + Davina’s Arrivals + Departures is an interactive artwork rooted in the direct life and death experiences of local people. British social practice artists Davina Drummond and Yara El-Sherbini use the iconic format of an old-fashioned arrivals and departures board as a poetic context to reflect on birth, death and memories of lives lived. Over the festival, names will be gathered from the public and continually added to the artwork. And it’s free to view.
Kinetika Flag Project: MK Mandalas
Friday 16th to Sunday 18th July 2021, and Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th July 2021 at The Milton Keynes Rose in Campbell Park
Creative company Kinetika is working with Milton Keynes artists and community groups to design and create 30 batik silk flags. Inspired by the visual forms and mandala symbols that were used in designs for The Milton Keynes Rose — a spectacular public space in Campbell Park used for celebration, commemoration and contemplation — the flags incorporate resonant themes such as coming together, appreciating nature and looking forward. It’s free to see the flags.
Luke Jerram’s Gaia and Museum of the Moon
Gaia from Saturday 10th to Friday 30th July at Middleton Hall in centre:mk and Museum of the Moon from Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th July 2021 at Tree Cathedral, Newlands
Installation artist Luke Jerram brings his inflated 3D models of the Earth and the Moon to Milton Keynes. It’s the first time the two works have been exhibited in the same city in the UK, at the same time. They’ll be installed in contrasting locations: Gaia in centre:mk and Museum of the Moon in the lush greenery of the Tree Cathedral.
Gaia shares an astronaut’s experience of seeing Earth from space for the first time — a feeling of wonder about the planet and a renewed sense of responsibility for it. Whilst the Moon has always inspired humanity, acting as a ‘cultural mirror’ to society, reflecting the ideas and beliefs of all people around the world. Museum of the Moon lets us observe and contemplate our cultural similarities and differences, and learn about Moon science. Both are free but Museum of the Moon should be booked in advance.
And finally, IF: Connected is a series of online talks and discussions exploring different aspects the programme. It will feature a range of artists and companies, and takes place throughout the festival. The digital platform will also host a series of special performances and events. And you can listen in for free.
There may be no Glastonbury this year, but there are plenty of other summer festivals to discover!
When: 10th – 30th July 2021
Where: Milton Keynes and online
£: Tickets prices vary, depending on the event. Many events are free but you may need to book in advance. You can book a maximum of six tickets for an event which is the standard ‘bubble’.
More info: www.ifmiltonkeynes.org