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Great Linford, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

Milton Keynes often abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about 60 miles (97 km) north-west of London.

It is also the principal town of the Borough of Milton Keynes. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967.

Its 89 km2 (34 sq mi) area incorporated the existing towns of Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between.

It took its name from the existing village of Milton Keynes, a few miles east of the planned city centre.

Uniquely for the United Kingdom, the urban form uses a 1 km grid for the top level of street hierarchy: the local form of most districts is more traditional.

At the 2001 census the population of the Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent town of Newport Pagnell, was 184,506, and that of the wider Borough, which has been a unitary authority independent of Buckinghamshire County Council since 1997, was 207,063 (compared with a population of around 53,000 for the same area in 1961).

The Borough's population is currently estimated to be over 230,000 (08/2009).

The open air National Bowl is a 65,000 capacity venue for large scale concerts. It is situated off the A5 near Furzton.

The 1,400 seat Milton Keynes Theatre (Blonski-Heard) opened in 1999.

The theatre has an unusual feature: the ceiling can be lowered closing off the third tier (gallery) to create a more intimate space for smaller scale productions.

There are further performance spaces in Bletchley, Wolverton, Leadenhall, Shenley Church End, Stantonbury and Walton Hall.

The city's public art gallery (Milton Keynes Gallery beside the main theatre) presents free exhibitions of international contemporary art.

thecentre:mk also hosts a contemporary art gallery called Milton Keynes Contemporary — WHITEWALL — presenting seven, eight week exhibitions per year from regional and national artists.

In Wavendon, on the southeast edge of the town, The Stables provides a venue for jazz, blues, folk, rock, classical, pop and world music. It is closely associated with jazz artists Cleo Laine and John Dankworth. The venue also hosts an annual summer camp for young musicians.

Another music venue is The Pitz Club in the Woughton Centre, Leadenhall. It usually features a mixture of punk, alternative rock, and heavy metal.

There are two museums, the Bletchley Park museum of wartime cryptography, and the Milton Keynes Museum, which includes the Stacey Hill Collection of rural life that existed before the foundation of the new town.

The town also has a literature scene, with groups like Speakeasy meeting regularly and hosting performance events, and the town's only poetry magazine, Monkey Kettle coming out twice a year.

In addition, two performance poetry groups exist in the town — Poetry Kapow!, an offshoot of Monkey Kettle though now independent of the parent organisation, specialising in live, multi-discipline, interactive poetry/art/music events, usually featuring slams; and Tongue in Chic, a regular open mic poetry event which features headline poets such as Rachel Pantechnicon and John Hegley.

Between them, the two groups supply members of Bardcore, a semi-professional group of 4-6 poets who work collaboratively on performance poetry projects.

Milton Keynes also boasts several choirs — the OU Choir, the Milton Keynes Chorale, the New English Singers, the Cornerstone Choir, Quorum, and others, along with a variety of amateur drama groups, and amateur musical theatre groups.

Milton Keynes Forum is the registered civic society for the city.

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