Milton Keynes will be an internationally recognised creative and cultured city; known for the excellence and diversity of its borough-wide, year-round cultural offer. As a city, Milton Keynes will provide residents and visitors with an inclusive cultural offer, where creative experiences and opportunities transform lives.
Milton Keynes’ Creative and Cultural Strategy has been created with citywide partners, recognising that multiple organisations, stakeholders and partnerships have helped form it and with Milton Keynes Council (MKC) as strategic lead subsequently deliver cultural growth. The strategy sets out an ambitious vision, one that is not owned by a single entity, but instead reflects the collaborative ideas and aspirations of many citizens, businesses, visitors and organisations.
Our cultural vision of city-wide ambition and collective direction will harness public, private and third sector investment together, ensuring future sustainability and profile for Milton Keynes.
Milton Keynes has a reputation for embracing innovation, creativity, experimentation and risk-taking. Alongside the creation of a unique urban environment, the cultivation of a rich and varied cultural life was always at the very heart of Milton Keynes’ founding utopian ethos and remains at the heart of our future plans. Milton Keynes always has and will continue to be a growing, forward-thinking city. We will build on the Milton Keynes tradition.
Culture no longer simply means being familiar with a select list of works of art and architecture, but the accumulated influence of creativity, the arts, museums,
galleries, libraries, archives and heritage upon all our lives. When we talk about our ‘cultural sectors’, we are referring to an extraordinary network of individuals and organisations, that together preserve, reflect and promote who we are as a nation, in all our rich diversity.
DCMS The Culture White Paper of a bold pioneering spirit going forward, with our vision to become an internationally renowned creative and cultured city. Culture is the way that we see ourselves and our place in the world; it is how we live our lives and how we appreciate and understand the lives of others. By harnessing the transformational power of culture in all its forms, we will help address our city’s current and future challenges.
Our shared goals
By sharing our cultural capital throughout the city, we will connect and engage our communities’ young and old – building confidence, encouraging cohesion, improving health and well-being and empowering them to take a lead. As an open and tolerant city built on migration, with one of the fastest growing and most diverse populations in the UK, we will work towards being a city whose cultural offer truly reflects and embraces our diversity.
We will provide our communities with real opportunities for creative learning and routes into cultural sector employment, growing and retaining our homegrown talent. We will work with strategic partners to ensure that creative learning and cultural experiences are provided for all our residents.