Award winning company, Festive Road, producers of the ever popular Walking with Giants parade, is urgently looking for a new work space in Milton Keynes.
“Our current Landlord has sold the building we occupy and has asked us to vacate the premises along with the other not for profit and charitable organizations” said Yvette Lamidey, Chair of Festive Road board.
The company has just over one month to find a new home for its artists and all the fantastical creations it presently houses. Over the last 10 years Festive Road have given Milton Keynes some of the most amazing spectacles: mechanical creatures, costumes, events and workshops in the community; including the famous dancing tea cups, the cycle powered elephant, full scale WW1 tank and stilt walking dinosaurs! The company is a real Milton Keynes success story with its roots in the local community and an ever growing national reputation. Throughout that time Festive Road has been relentlessly supporting local events, delivering hundreds of inspirational workshops in local schools; reaching on average 5000 children and young people annually.
Simon Tipping, organizer of the annual Walking with Giants parade said: “This is actually a fabulous opportunity as we’ve been expanding for a while and finding more suitable premises was always on our business plans but not quite so soon…we don’t have much time to find somewhere.”
Creator and Artistic Director, Jessica Rost, said: “the timing is not great as we are just about to launch into a very exciting new Arts Council funded production which promises to amazing and wow audiences even more than anything we’ve made previously”. The company has many more projects in the pipeline including Paraffinalia, the annual midwinter festival on Campbell Park which they started last year. They are also about to start work on a spectacular new build for Northampton Hindu Welfare Association, who’s Diwali parade is celebrating its 15th year this November.
At the moment Festive Road occupy a first floor office floor in Linford Wood for free (25x35m - approx 18,500 sq ft). However, the space isn’t suitable for the fabrication work that they do especially the work which is now being commissioned over this coming year.
They are looking for a ground floor unit - possibly an industrial or agricultural unit - with large bay doors, suitable for large scale metal and wood fabricating. The company need a minimum floor space of 15x15m (10,000 sq ft) but would prefer to occupy something much larger. For the support staff, costume design and making and of course for the general business things they also need office space within the unit. Ideally they need to use the space from August/September onwards so they can make the pieces they’ve been commissioned for this year but also to support their business plans for the next 5 years which may include letting space to other makers in their network.
The current space is shared with other makers and artists and the company would love to be able to take them to their next home, as finding space is not easy for artists who make large scale creations.
“If there were a space for a café or associate business that would be even better as we’d have an opportunity for a partnership,” said Yvette Lamidey. “Please share this with your local connections that may have or know someone who has space to rent which would be suitable for us? It would be terrible to see our magical menagerie of weird and wonderful creations homeless and our artists out on the streets!”
If you know of anywhere suitable, please contact:
Simon Tipping, simon@festiveroad.org.uk (M) 07977 142498 or
Yvette Lamidey yvette@yvettelamidey.com (M) 07770752535
Thank you for your help and support
