A music video shot covertly in Milton Keynes has launched a variety show at the landmark 
In 2020, Sheniah Asiamah, a singer-songwriter from Milton Keynes, wrote a song about her city, taking a cue from an archival postcard. The postcard image was a still from a 1980s advert for the new city, showing thousands of red balloons released by existing city residents – an image eerily precursory of the 2002 artwork by Banksy.
The resulting track was ‘My City’, a bittersweet ballad about longing for the fulfilment of the promise of urban idyll made by the creators of a city and ultimately embracing its beauty and flaws alike. It was written from the heart, based on Asiamah’s experience of growing up in Milton Keynes.
“I've spent most of my life here in Milton Keynes, inspired by my dad, who wrote plays that showed here,” says Asiamah. “What inspired him to launch his creativity into the void was that Milton Keynes was still so new when he came in the 80s. He saw it as a birthplace of potential, and it still is, young and misunderstood.”
Come 2024, Asiamah enlisted the help of local filmmaker Benjamin Charter to produce a music video for the song. Shot covertly with a small crew in central Milton Keynes, it features a solitary actor moving across a sparse industrial cityscape, trying to engage with passers-by through dance. The team then gathered more locals to cast the remaining roles in the film, by distributing flyers in shops and cafes.
Then things leaped further as Asiamah decided to create a platform to celebrate Milton Keynes-based talent, by inviting a range of acts to be part of the music video’s launch event.
The event became ‘My City Performs’: a variety show to showcase local talent, unique for its wideranging line-up and location – MK Gallery, an architectural landmark which won several prestigious RIBA awards in 2021 and has hosted exhibitions by Turner prize nominees and big names like Andy Warhol.
On the evening of 30th May, MK Gallery will brim with talent ranging from alternative bands and electronic music artists to choirs, singer-songwriters, rappers, theatre and a contemporary dance group. It is the organisers’ challenge to the perceived notion that Milton Keynes is an urban backwater devoid of culture.
"Milton Keynes is more than just roundabouts and concrete cows,” says Benjamin Charter, who has once again partnered with Asiamah to put on the event. “I think the trees, because they line the sides of all the roads, hide a lot of what is here physically and that goes the same culturally – there's so much more to see beyond the trees." My City Performs is on at MK Gallery on 30th May, doors 6pm. Tickets can be purchased through the MK Gallery website.
