Updates from the Festival Campus

Photographs by Shane Downer

Building on the Festival Campus site has stepped up hugely with the Meeting Place almost complete, Utopia Station topping out over the weekend, Bike School’s paint job and Utopian Laundromat also getting closer to completion. We can’t wait to welcome you later this week!

View the full programme of FREE events here︎

Visiting the Festival? Find out more about the unique chance to stay as part of Beds United and become part of the Festival ︎

Two job opportunites – apply now!

#1

A Festival of Creative Urban Living
Campus Assistants, Milton Keynes Council

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Part-time
Closes: 31 August 2019

We are looking  to build a team of dedicated and enthusiastic Festival Campus Assistants who can support the Festival team with the delivery of our exciting and varied programme.  You will need to be good with people; interested in themes and ideas that the Festival is exploring; keen to work alongside our team of artists and architects and willing to be flexible and responsive.

Find out more and apply here︎

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#2

MK Skate
Exhibition Assistant, Milton Keynes Council

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Part-time
Closes: 29 August 2019

The MK Skate team are looking for three to four enthusiastic exhibition assistants to ensure that all our visitors enjoy their visit to the exhibition and leave with a greater understanding of the history and culture of skateboarding in Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes has played a seminal role in the development of UK skateboarding culture. During the late 1980s and early '90s it was the skateboarding capital of the UK and is still the lead city for street skating, in 2004 it developed and opened Europe’s first skate plaza, The Buszy. At the centre of the project is a five-week exhibition in Centre:MK. The exhibition will narrate the chronology of the development of skateboarding in MK from the late 1970s through to the present; highlighting key moments, ground-breaking skateboarders, and the creative culture associated with skateboarding in the city. The project is funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Milton Keynes Council and is supported by Centre:MK, Living Archive Milton Keynes, and the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies.


Find out more and apply here︎

WANTED: Music for bikes!

Deadline 28 September 2019

CLIP are organising a bike performance or a soundtrack for a bike ride. This is a gig where the audience will listen whilst riding around on a group bike ride. This will take place at the Festival of Creative Urban Living in Milton Keynes on the 5 October at 3pm.

How to get involved? 

1. Write music for a bike ride, something that you feel would make an Interesting soundtrack to a bike journey. This could be any genre of music, recording, soundscape or spoken word and be as long or as short as you like. Download our sample pack here http://bit.ly/2OVrVnx and get creating. You can use these samples on their own or feel free to add your own sounds and instrumentation. Please use WeTransfer and submit your music to clipsoundandmusic@gmail.com

2. Turn up on the 5 October at 3pm with your bike and join the bike ride.

Find out more about CLIP and their workshops during the Festival here.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter #creativeurban

A Festival of Urban Living:
Get Involved Information Evening
Tuesday 16 July, 6–7.30pm

An informaton evening about A Festival Of Urban Living
Tuesday 16 July, 6–7.30pm
MK Gallery Project Space, MK9 3QA

Meet raumlaborberlin who are co-curating the festival, transforming Midsummer Boulevard, bringing together; artists, architects, designers, urban planners, thinkers, creatives and many others to deliver a free programme of exhibitions, events, creative workshops, performances and much more.

Find out about BEDS UNITED a unique project which aims to celebrate the huge diversity of city, inviting our citizens to host a festival guest for one night only. Sign Up HERE

Find out about other projects including BIKE SCHOOL which will promote and celebrate cycling in many ways. Bike School will rise to the challenge of making MK the Greenest city yet.


Join us on Facebook or Twitter Instagram #Creativeurban

MK Skate – this autumn!

Sean Smith, Switch Backside Tailslide, Milton-Keynes Skate Plaza. Photograph Wig Worland.

Skateboarding is a culture that has grown with Milton Keynes. The history of skateboarding starts in the mid-1970s, less than 10 years after the city was founded. Before it was even built, newly arrived young people were skating the ditches and dug-out tunnels. Then came the modern architecture, the straight and smooth roads, the grid, the use of granite and marble, segregated pedestrian footways and bicycle routes, empty streets with no one to kick you out. The city's many underpasses provided a solution to the English weather. It was like the town had been built especially for skateboarders and the MK skate community found a way to inhabit the streets that chimed with the radical, pioneering spirit of the place itself. By 2004 when Europe's first skate plaza, The Buszy, opened at the back of the bus station, the city's place as the UK's lead city for street skateboarding was undeniable.

MK Skate is a project celebrating this rich history. It is designed and delivered by the city’s skateboarders and supported by National Lottery Heritage Fund, Milton Keynes Council, Living Archive Milton Keynes and Centre:MK. The project launches in June 2019 and will run through to July next year. To coincide with The Festival of Creative Urban Living there will be an outdoor exhibition and archive trail through the city centre, as well as an exhibition, all charting the history of skateboarding in MK. At the end of the programme, with the support from the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, objects and stories uncovered from the project will be transferred into the Milton Keynes Archive, and a book will be produced. 

MK has and continues to produce some amazing skateboarding and creative talent. This includes Wig Worland and Leo Sharp who are amongst the leading UK skateboard photographers and Lindsay Knight, a documentary maker with a skate speciality. They will be taking part in the project, along with artist James Jessop, and long-time editor of 'Sidewalk' magazine, Ben Powell.

If you would like to get involved as a contributor or volunteer please email: culture@milton-keynes.gov.uk, you can follow the project on @MKskatescene.

Meeting Place – call for proposals

The raumlabor team have designed a fantastic temporary public space which will be located in the centre of Midsummer Boulevard, opposite INTU and The Point. The idea for this space is to provide a place where people can come together, to sit, enjoy a coffee or cup of tea and take part in a free and varied programme. We have some fantastic content so far with some amazing speakers, performances and film screenings planned – but we felt that something is still missing….

We want offer up 10 slots for MK to programme – that means you!

We are interested in ideas and proposals that will showcase the fantastic creativity and ideas within the city. We would like this to be as open as possible and to embrace culture and creativity in all its forms – this might include a drawing class, cooking school, sewing club, book reading, open mic session, yoga class, tai-chi or debating session!

Find out more and how to apply here

Crossroads open call – Winners announced

To complete A Festival of Creative Urban Living’s programme, raumlaborberlin launched the Crossroads Open Call to commission three public art projects which will accompany the Festival under the categories of ‘the built’, ‘the unbuilt’ and ‘the unbuildable’.

The response was breathtaking. Together the Jury looked at 101 proposals from visual artists, architects, designers, creative practices, musicians, urban planners, gardeners… So many professions, many interdisciplinary and international groups and collectives who submitted an array of craziest constructions, mobile units, programmes, processes and visions!

We are very happy to announce the three winning projects that will be commissioned as part of A Festival of Creative Urban Living.

View winners and runners up HERE