Thousands of pounds to be spent on plants that SING at Milton Keynes shopping centre

An arts festival that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage is to bring ‘singing’ plants to our city centre.

The Milton Keynes International Festival (IF) runs from July 21 to July 30 this year and is funded by large grants from Arts Council England and Milton Keynes City Council.

Its aim is to engage the public in art, music, culture and entertainment, using artists from all over the world.

Among the more unusual highlights planned for this year’s festival are real-life cows grazing in a giant-sized picture frame in a local park and a large-scale temporary installation called The Place Between in the centre:mk’s Middleton Hall.

Two different artists have been commission to produce Middleton Hall exhibition, which is in collaboration with the centre:mk management and will start of July 14.

Artist Rebecca Louise Law plans to work with local residents to find 20,000 examples of local plant life, adding their gatherings to her existing 200,000-strong collection.

Together they sew and wire the stems and fronds into multiple trails of flowers and plant material which will transform Middleton Hall into a "contemplative space for visitors that is simultaneously protective, potent and fragile,” say the festival organisers.

Meanwhile on location in Milton Keynes, a special sound artist called Jason Singh will ‘record’ the sounds of indoor and outdoor plants and trees.

He uses bio feedback technology to “capture the electrical activity made deep within their vegetative tissues” and then converts this data into “immersive musical soundscapes” that will envelop people as they make their journey through The Place Between.

At the same time, in the nearby Fred Roche Gardens at CMK, Belgium artists and scientists called the Captain Boomer Collective will stage a unique artwork using actual cows.

"Real-life cows – referencing the concrete cows for which Milton Keynes is famed – will graze within an outsized gilt picture frame,” said the festival organisers.

Another highlight of the festival will be the UK premiere of Carnivale from Belgian company De Machienerie. Running in Campbell Park for three days from Friday 21 to Sunday 23 July, it’s described as “a wondrous fantasy world of ecological wonder”.

The full IF programme will be released next month.