Sumo

Milton Keynes is unlike most other cities in the UK. At just over 40 years old, it is the product of a 1960s urban design template — born as a ‘new town’ in ’67, but designed to expand to become a city over time. In this respect, it’s been a success: MK is predicted to be the tenth largest city in the UK by 2025.

But perceptions of a soulless and manufactured location stubbornly remain. And with its grid-like street structures and ‘60s-style concrete shopping centres, for most people Milton Keynes is not exactly synonymous with arts and culture. In 2009, to promote better cultural engagement within the city, as well as raise its profile in cultural sectors nationally and abroad, the Arts Council England decided to part-fund a pilot international arts festival in Milton Keynes.

The Arts Council approached two of its regularly funded organisations in the city, The Stables and MK Gallery, and asked them to plan, curate and partly host this festival during July 2010. By autumn 2009, it had been decided that the festival would be led by The Stables and its chief executive Monica Ferguson, but it still lacked a name, visual identity or indeed any kind of brand with which to promote the programme over the coming months. So an international tender was launched to search for a branding and design consultancy that could help form a festival brand that would create engagement with the public and potential sponsors.

‘It was the first time that this kind of festival had ever happened in Milton Keynes and we needed somebody who really understood that and who could achieve something pretty big in a short space of time,’ says Alison Fordham, an arts and cultural industries consultant who became marketing and communications director on the project.

Sumo was one of a number of groups taking part in the international tender, but its initial ideas were well-received by the organisers and after an additional meeting Sumo was appointed to the branding project. ‘We wanted to do something unusual, based around the idea of showing art and cultural events in unexpected and interesting places, such as car parks or old supermarkets. Sumo had really understood that and presented us with options which reflected the idea really well,’ says Fordham.

At this stage, the Milton Keynes festival was a festival without a name. Although a few ideas had been made by stakeholders, none had been subject to rigorous thought and discussion, or been agreed by everyone involved. ‘We already had a creative director and a sense of some of the things that would be in the festival, but we needed a name and we needed to get an idea of what it would look like and feel like,’ says Fordham.

Sumo organised a workshop amongst all the main stakeholders—The Stables, Milton Keynes Council, Destination Milton Keynes, MK Gallery, MK City Centre Manager and the Festival Steering Group—in order to establish the objectives, tone and character of the festival and to settle on an effective and well-considered name.

‘Names they had mentioned already included Silent Monkey, which is an anagram of Milton Keynes, and Quadrature, which references the grid design of the city,’ says Sarah Hanley, creative director at Sumo and project lead for the consultancy.

‘Although some of the venues had collaborated a little before, they had never all worked together on this scale and at this point everyone wanted something different from the festival and they all liked different names. So it wasn’t just a case of choosing a visual route and getting on with it; we needed to agree exactly what was wanted from the festival.’

The workshop gave all the stakeholders the opportunity to discuss their ideas. ‘They thought it was important that the festival should bring spaces in the city back to life and renew interest in areas that people may have started to feel down about. It also needed to introduce art to those who might not think it’s for them and it needed to encourage people to continue visiting the venues after the festival has finished,’ says Hanley.

These ideas, along with a set of ‘personality traits’, were added to a list which began to reveal the brand identity of the festival—contemporary, fresh, surprising, quirky, accessible and importantly, distinctive amongst the many other arts festivals in the UK and overseas. And with this identity in place it became easier to select an appropriate name. ‘The name is obviously important and we discussed whether it should be ‘Milton Keynes’ or ‘MK’, how prominent the city name should be at all and whether we should use the word ‘arts’,’ says Fordham.

Ultimately, IF Milton Keynes was chosen as the festival’s name. IF represents International Festival, but also acts as a flexible copy device for marketing materials, generating captivating phrases such as ‘IF you love live music’ and ‘IF you have a sense of adventure’. ‘Using IF allowed us to play and have a sense of humour, but there is also room for the brand to develop over time and perhaps eventually to stand on its own, without the ‘Milton Keynes’,’ adds Fordham.

Without a full line-up and with only a short period of time between establishing the brand and the festival’s launch, it was really important to build anticipation amongst a range of audiences, including potential sponsors in the business community.

‘The branding and teaser campaigns had to attract the local community, as well as people from other big cities such as London,’ explains Hanley. ‘It couldn’t be too elitist, but needed to be accessible to all. So the colour palette was bold, using black and bright colours, and we used plain English that was direct and to the point.

This delivered a diverse and flexible set of branding materials, which we applied to posters, ads, print and some banners. The organisers were also very clued up about using online social media, posting a lot of information, messages and pictures to Facebook and Flickr, with even more online activity happening during the festival.’

The strength of the IF name in particular was revealed by a number of positive references in the press, including coverage
in The Times. And according to Caterina Loriggio, a creative programmer at Arts Council England, the festival’s presentation was notably strong with ‘nicely designed signage, great print and a great festival concept which was carried throughout everything’.

IF Milton Keynes secured Sky Arts as a major sponsor and ran from 16-25 July 2010. Its final programme delivered 115 performances and 45 exhibitions and events to almost 100,000 people. The economic impact on the city has been calculated at £4.5m and 94 per cent of people surveyed said the festival had improved their perception of Milton Keynes.