Full programme announced for major 10-day festival in Milton Keynes this summer

The full programme for the 10-day 2023 IF: Milton Keynes International Festival has been announced for this summer.

From Friday July 21 to Sunday July 30, the city will be transformed by live music, theatre, comedy, cabaret, outdoor events and family activities, including major commissions and UK premieres.

The events include the UK premiere of an ingenious, interactive fairground village, jaw dropping acrobatics, big-name bands in the Spiegeltent, winged angels in the sky and plants that sign to us at the city centre.

Outdoor installations, performance and family friendly work, free or deliberately low cost, are trademarks of the festival, which attracts tens of thousands of people.

French company Les Commandos Percu bring the pyrotechnics of Silence! to Campbell Park on Friday 21 July with a parade of drummers and a large volcanic sculpture. The sky is set alight and the volcano erupts in a dazzling finale of pyrotechnics, special effects and percussion.

Also on Friday 21 July in Festival Square is Trigger’s Teabreak, a transportive audio piece and live dance work which takes the audience through the the history of tea, with freshly brewed chai and peppermint tea served from a Tuk Tuk,

For three days from Friday 21 to Sunday 23 July, Belgian company De Machienerie give the UK premiere of Carnivale – an ingenious, interactive ‘fairground village’ – at Festival Central in Campbell Park. Carnivale makes a poetic and powerful environmental statement about how animals are now threatened with extinction.

Also from Belgium are artists and scientists Captain Boomer Collective, whose Pasture with Cows sets up in Fred Roche Gardens from Friday 21 to Sunday 23 July. Real-life cows – referencing the concrete cows for which Milton Keynes is famed – will graze within an outsized gilt picture frame.

From Friday 21 to Sunday 23 July, Gijs van Bon’s computer sandwriter Blom will appear at various city centre locations, slowly moving and drawing an outline of a carpet of flowers on the ground. Families are invited to fill small buckets with coloured sand and use it to colour in the drawings.

Also during these dates, Dorset-based Gobbledegook Theatre bring their playful science fantasy Ear Trumpet to Fred Roche Gardens. Audiences are co-opted by Gobbledegook’s team of experts into their National Institute of Sonic Geology. Supplied with custom-built ear trumpets, they listen in on the eons-worth of sounds trapped inside the Earth’s crust.

In residential areas and the city centre, on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 July, audiences can participate in Follow Me, a journey packed full of parkour and street acrobatics. Two urban acrobats of Be Flat from Belgium will show them how to discover the city in a very unusual way.

From Friday 28 to Sunday 30 July, Catalonia’s LaDinamo bring their band on wheels Music on Cycles to various city centre locations. Literally funk on the move, they deliver a high-voltage moving concert and a frenetic street party.

On the nights of Friday 28 and Saturday 29 July will be a opportunity to experience the luminous Place des Anges, only seen twice before in the UK and the biggest show ever brought to the festival.

A multitude of winged white angels – acrobats, climbers, dancers and circus artists – will animate the night sky above central Milton Keynes. Suspended from invisible zip lines, they float and fly, defying gravity. As the angels descend, they release swirling clouds of white feathers, cascading from the sky.

Also from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 July, Catalonian street arts company Tombs Creatius come to Festival Central in Campbell Park Plateau. Monster Colours is a colourful collection of 25 large wooden artisan games to challenge the whole family, testing puzzle solving, coordination and teamwork.

Belgium’s Sur Mesure will set up Barrière in a city centre location and on Festival Central in Campbell Park from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 July, when musicians, singers and acrobats draw audiences into a surreal world without doors, full of humour and mischief.

At MK Rose in Campbell Park on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 July, MK-based Pagrav Dance Company will perform Deva to challenges the myths and expectations of the South Asian body in Indian classical dance.

On Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 July in Campbell Park come two shows from contemporary circus and outdoor theatre company Dizzy O’Dare. Falconry Dismay is an anarchic and wild flight into the world of falconry shows, while Kevin Tickle’s Dogs! will feature bombastic breeds and classy canines.

Another family-friendly show, Mimbre and Daryl & Co’s Look Mum, No Hands! comes to the MK Rose in Campbell Park on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 July. Also on that final weekend is Handpicked Productions’ The Promise at Great Linford Manor Park.

Among artists appearing in the Spiegeltent in Campbell Park are Barely Methodical Troupe’s award-winning show Bromance, Ireland’s finest improvising musical comedian Abandoman, The Nick Cope Family Concert, the Peatbog Faeries , An Evening Without Kate Bush and Tex-Mex band Los Pacaminos,

Music legends Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp will perform on Friday 28 July, while family-friendly comedy comes to the tent on Saturday 29 July with Comedy Club 4 Kids.

La Voix aka Britain’s Funniest Redhead will swing into town on Saturday 29 July with her most ambitious show yet, while on Sunday 30 July the award-winning Big Fish Little Fish will bring tunes to the family massive with an old skool drum & bass and jungle set from DJ Raks and multi-sensory dancefloor filled with bubbles, balloons, snow foam and smoke rings, topped off with a giant parachute finale. The nightclub-influenced Monster Ceilidh Band will perform on Sunday 30 July. Other Festival highlights include The Place Between, a large-scale installation of ‘singing’ plants and flowers at centre:mk’s Middleton Hall.

Meanwhile, Forever? voice and chamber ensemble will premier at The Stables on July 22 to celebrate the hymn Amazing Grace, which was written in Olney.