Events

IF: MK – A Look Back at the World Premier Immersive Art Installation

IF: Milton Keynes International Festival – A Look Back at the World Premier Immersive Art Installation at centre:mk.

centre:mk has been the proud headline partner of IF: Milton Keynes International Festival since 2016. Working closely with the International Festival organisers, we have helped to present and co-commission work that aims to be thought-provoking, inspiring and a catalyst for creativity.

In the summer of 2023, centre:mk was proud to be the headline sponsor and host to the world premiere of the immersive large-scale artwork, ‘A Place Between’, created by artist Rebecca Louise Law and sound artist, Jason Singh, as part of the International Festival, Milton Keynes. The installation, which was free to visit, incorporated more than 200,000 pieces of plant material alongside immersive soundscapes. centre:mk saw over half a million people to experience this groundbreaking art piece, right in the heart of our busy shopping centre!

‘The Place Between’ consisted of 345 x 8 metre strands of 50,000 donated flowers and plants, individually hand strung together by volunteers over the course of several weeks. Visitors were invited to walk through and immerse themselves in, whilst listening to a soundtrack recorded entirely from plants, some of which was recorded from the biodata of the 40+ year old plants and trees across the centre.

The festival received global attention from the media including mentions on BBC world service, The Daily Telegraph, BBC Radio and ITV Anglia to name just a few.

Rebecca Louise Law said: “Our relationship with the Earth is essential for our survival. Everyone is connected and we all contribute to the cycle of life. I want to build an installation that enables us to value those connections. It’s an exploration of the space between, the place where we connect to each other and nature.”

Plant Soundscapes by Jason Singh

'The Place Between' also featured immersive soundscapes commissioned from Jason Singh who captures the biodata from plants - including some of the iconic 40-year-old planting in centre:mk itself - and transforms them into sound. Singh’s music has been called ‘beautiful, strange, calming’ by nature writer Robert Macfarlane.