Throughout the year, we hosted over 164 days of events in Middleton Hall, including our bi-annual Fashion Weekends, Black History Month Art and Culture exhibition, Handmade & Vintage Extravaganzas, and community events including Milton Keynes City of Codes & Light Festival, MK Indie Book fair, and so much more… Our Christmas Grotto is also a highlight of the year, welcoming over 30,000 children and adults to visit Santa, and nearly 80,000 hopped aboard our Train and VR Sleigh Ride. (We’re not biased but it’s not to be missed!)
centre:mk
2025 was a big year for centre:mk, welcoming guests from across the region to explore new stores, events, cultural and artistic celebrations, supporting charities and so much more as part of the wider city and beyond.
Throughout 2025 we welcomed brands for everyone to love, from Chaiiwala, Katie Loxton & Joma Jewellery, EYEBRŌW, Nimy Creation, ProCook, Pravins, Miniso, Barclays and The Barbers Lounge. Joining our unrivalled 170 store and restaurant line up.
A real highlight for 2025 was our continued partnerships with Milton Keynes International Festival as headline sponsor, and Milton Keynes Smart City, through incredible events hosted in Middleton Hall.
This year’s collaboration focused on art for Peace, hosting the world-renowned art installation, Les Colombes, by artist Michael Pendry. We saw thousands of origami doves suspended overhead in Middleton Hall to form a stunning visual symbol for visitors to connect with, through a shared sense of unity and hope. Throughout the summer we invited families, friends, and curious passersby to join workshops to fold their own doves and write messages of peace. We also co-commissioned the World premiere of Utopia in Verse, an ambitious poem and performance piece by local International Festival poet-in residence, Maureen Onwunali, in collaboration with young people from across the city, capturing their hopes, fears, and dreams for a better future. By using centre:mk as the backdrop to International Festival installations, it brought extraordinary cultural experiences into everyday spaces, showing that art is for everyone.
The Milton Keynes Smart City Robotics Competition took place at the centre in September, bringing together international teams from universities, colleges, companies and laboratories across Europe, competing to inspire the next generation of robotics engineers, with robots taking on challenges that support and improve everyday human life. The initiative seeks to showcase Milton Keynes as the UK’s number one location, in which new technologies are being developed and tested, with projects already live in a real-world environment. Find out more here
centre:mk won over 6 awards, including 2 at the Sceptres shopping centre industry awards, for Sustainability Initiative of the year and Innovation of the Year for our Smart City Experience Centre and Robotics Competition. We are also immensely proud to be the first retail and city centre destination in the world to obtain Social Value Management Certificate Level 2.
Supporting the local community is so important to us, and this year we are proud to have supported over 90 organisations, from local community groups to national charities, hosting 167 days of fundraising right here at centre:mk, raising over £100,000! The year was topped off with the overwhelming generosity of our guests, donating 1,469 worth gifts to The Henry Allen Trust, supporting children facing childhood cancer, as part of ‘The Giving Tree’ initiative at Christmas. Thank you to everyone who visited, donated, and helped us empower these incredible causes.
Throughout the year we’ve continued to grow our ESG strategy and have been awarded several amazing and sought after accreditations, achieving Highly recommended Blue Badge Action Awards for ‘Best accessible day out’ and Gold in the International CSR Awards for our support for the disabled community, through the work we did for “Purple Tuesday”.
![Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.MediaWithCrops`1[centreMK.Definitions.ContentModels.Image]](https://cdn.centremk.com/media/dngpvfub/latest-news-how-you-can-make-a-difference-image-content-block.jpg?width=190&height=220&v=1db727341b6dbf0)