Collaboration is a core component of creative practice amongst artists in Milton Keynes. Artistic collaborations often occur behind the scenes and go unseen: the collaborative efforts to make something happen. Collaboration in this sense takes many forms: to source materials for an artwork, to figure out the logistics of assembling, moving and re-assembling an artwork, for example. There’s also the process of installing art. Exhibition spaces need preparing for install. Painting walls, resurfacing floors, building partitions, organising what goes where and next to which works. What if certain artworks don’t work together? Does the space have sufficient light? Is there too much light? What about the electrics? What about sound? In a collaborative effort to pull something of, collaboration in art can be pretty manual: wielding tools, cleaning spaces, fixing things that break (including artworks themselves).
Collaboration in the arts also occurs in front of the scenes and is more easily seen: the people who volunteer their time at exhibitions to relay the intentions of an artwork to visitors. The family, friends and strangers who show their support by spending time in front of an artwork, taking in its form and its meaning. Listening to sound art, watching performances, engaging with interactive pieces. Collaboration in this sense is defined by the conversations and discussions that happen in front of artworks, or ideas that are sparked in the process of looking at, and moving between works, in the space itself. What did you think of that? Have you seen this? In this sense, collaboration is not static, it’s an ongoing process.
Collaboration is also the theme of the 2025 edition of Milton Keynes Fringe Festival, under the co-direction of artists Ciara Callaghan and Madeleine Wilkie. ‘What emerges from when creative practices come together to create something new?’, this edition of Fringe asks. What challenges and joys will emerge in the process of bringing together 30 artists, whose work is installed in gallery and outdoors sites across Milton Keynes? How will the city’s urban and green spaces be transformed for the duration of July?
A cursory look of creative practice and evolution in Milton Keynes—a new city born out of a New Town, out of the combining of an old village and several old towns—may can some indication of how coming together, in the name of artistic collaboration, can create and nurture new relationships with art. Over the years, Milton Keynes has weathered lazy tropes and missives, cited as truisms: Milton Keynes, it’s all concrete and roundabouts, right? There are many roundabouts, to be sure, but not an inordinate amount of concrete. In any case, the image of Milton Keynes as a landscape cast in concrete is one that is premised on the idea of an artificial sprawl that was built with a rigidity and inflexibility so deeply embedded within its fabric that there could be no scope for growth and change.
Concrete is a composite material—a collaboration between cement, sand, aggregates and water, if you will. Back in the ’70s, artist-in-residence, Liz Leyh, worked with communities across Milton Keynes, using concrete as a cheap and accessible material with which to create sculptures and sculptural forms. Much of Leyh’s work was done in collaboration with local residents and other community artists. Of the many concrete play sculptures and forms made by artists working in Milton Keynes, the Cows are the most well-known: a herd of six cows composed of concrete, wire and other detritus, a project made in collaboration with local school children. Installed in Loughton Valley Park, the cows serve as a reminder of a creative and collaborative impulses that provide the structure of the city.
The framework of Milton Keynes is premised on its grid road system—a loose rectilinear network that connects the city together. Sometimes, that framework can feel like it creates near misses rather than direct connections, like catching a brief glimpse of the Cows in their grazing from the view of the H3 carriageway. But what if the fabric of the city was likened to a patchwork quilt, woven together along the fringed edges of its smaller sections to form a multifarious whole?
This is a city that brands itself as better by design, but there’s something more informal, and inherently collaborative, that underpins the creative practice of being in Milton Keynes. It’s a D-I-Y mentality that’s akin to the behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting an exhibition or a show off the ground. It exists on the fringes of the city, in temporary spaces—former warehouses, community centres and shop units [The Old Bus Station, Former Next shop window, 8 Sunset Walk]—that are repurposed as de facto arts, music and cultural venues.
Often flying under the radar of commercial sponsorship, blockbuster attractions and big (or any) budgets, it’s a creative scene that is propped up by artists who share in common a commitment to collaboration—in coming together to create something new, for the benefit of other artists and other communities within Milton Keynes.
As the city grows, so does the reputation of its existing arts and cultural venues. Annual and biennale arts, culture and creative events also attract audiences from afar. Through temporary interventions in everyday spaces on the fringes of the city, creative practices in Milton Keynes also connect with audiences from within. Coming together in this way provides informal spaces for emerging artists to nurture their practice with the guidance and support of fellow artists. In this way, collaboration is a shared endeavour.
The emphasis is not so much on producing a polished, end product that provides a neat framework for creative practice. Instead, in the process of weaving together what exists on the fringes of Milton Keynes’s patchwork quilt, what emerges is something, not accidental, but purposeful: the behind-the-scenes becomes front-and-centre.