Putting Milton Keynes on the map, one story at a time

Every city is full of stories. In 2025, MK Lit Fest set out to capture the stories of Milton Keynes and pin them, quite literally, to the map.

Arts Gateway launched Raising Voices, a project inviting local writers of all ages to create poems, flash fiction and creative non-fiction rooted in real places across the city. Each accepted piece is published with an audio recording and a photograph of its location on an interactive online StoryMap, where anyone can explore Milton Keynes through the words of the people who know it best.

It genuinely is anyone's map, too. Submissions were judged anonymously, around four in five were accepted, and every writer received editorial support to help polish their work.

From classroom to city centre

Arts Gateway took creative writing out into the community through twelve free workshops across the year, all led by professional poets and authors. They reached 220 secondary school students, hundreds of adults online, and 45 people who joined events in a pop-up writing hub in an empty shop unit at centre:mk, where John Grindrod, Will Burns and Helen Bowell led sessions in creative non-fiction, fiction and poetry respectively. One of those visitors enjoyed it so much that they have since become a trustee of the organisation.

In one memorable session, local poet Maureen Onwunali performed to 121 Year 9 students, many of whom were initially unsure about writing poetry. She talked them through crafting a poem about place, drawing on her own childhood in Milton Keynes, and by the end of the session students were standing up to read out lines they had written only minutes before.

"Today has made me want to do more creative writing," said one, "because I actually enjoy it."

A map that came to life

The StoryMap launched in December 2025 at an event where writers aged from their teens to their seventies read their work to a live and livestreamed audience. As the evening drew to a close, the map was revealed for the first time.

Then people opened the map on their phones to find their own pieces, and those of family and friends, pinned across Milton Keynes.

Still learning, still growing

The Lit Fest team are candid about what a year of Raising Voices taught them. Writers, it turns out, need deadlines. A map that is always open is easy to put off submitting to, so the team now builds in moments to write towards. They also learned that a single visit to a school is not enough. The workshops lit a spark in students, but the team want to return and help young writers polish their pieces until they are ready for the map. Both lessons are shaping what comes next.

Visual artists are to join the project, more schools workshops are planned, and a free SoundWalk is soon to be launched. It will guide walkers to spots around the city where, on arrival, they will hear a story or poem written about the very place they are standing. The aim is a rich showcase of local writing online in time for Milton Keynes' 60th birthday.

Your story

The map is open. Go and find your neighbourhood, your park or your bus stop, and if no one has written about it yet, consider that an invitation.

Raising Voices is accepting submissions now on the MK Lit Fest website: a poem, a short piece of fiction, or a true story, connected to any place in Milton Keynes that matters to you.

Read more about the project: https://www.mklitfest.org/raisingvoicesproject

Explore the StoryMap: https://write.walklistencreate.org/wr_instance/the-raising-voices-project/

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