This symposium gathers artists, curators, academics and community arts organisations together to discuss the unique heritage and present conditions of new towns, how they work with their communities to produce the common and their response to a call for the right to the (new) city.

Cave is a permanent artwork in Belvedere Park in Milton Keynes, made by the artists Heather and Ivan Morison. It is a simple platform and shelter of heavy grey leaning concrete faces, which incorporates a cast iron bench and cast fire bowl. It is set into a steep slope, setting its back to the centre of the city, and looking out over the park, the outskirts of Milton Keynes, and the countryside beyond.

Andrea Büttner discusses her exhibition at MK Gallery, and artistic practice with curator Ben Borthwick. The exhibition presented a "major survey of recent and new work by Andrea... (b. Stuttgart, Germany, 1972), including video, sculpture, reverse glass painting and woodcuts. Büttner studied art history and philosophy and art, and completed a doctorate on the subject of shame and art in 2010.

Melanie Smith is one of Mexico's most celebrated contemporary artists. Her first UK survey exhibition will include a major new film, Fordlandia (2013), produced in the Brazilian Amazon in an abandoned city and rubber plantation built in the 1920s by Henry Ford; and the films Spiral City (2003) and Xilitla (2010), featuring Edward James’ architectural follies in the Mexican jungle. Melanie Smith In Conversation with Professor Dawn Ades is a rare opportunity to hear current exhibitor Melanie discuss her practice with writer, curator and lecturer, Professor Dawn Ades.

MK Calling (28 June – 8 September) is the Gallery’s summer programme of exhibitions and performances, featuring 100 artists, musicians and performers from Milton Keynes. This dynamic season of painting, video, dance, music, poetry and much, much more will showcase MK’s finest emerging and established talent.

James Welling was born in Hartford, Connecticut, USA in 1951. He gained a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the influential art school CalArts (California Institute of Fine Arts), where he studied under artist John Baldessari, alongside contemporaries that included David Salle, Mark Manders and Jack Goldstein. In 1995 Welling moved to Los Angeles to head the photography area of the Art Department of UCLA, where he continues to live and work.

Anna Barriball’s first major survey exhibition, at MK Gallery, brought together drawing, video, photography and sculpture made over the last decade. She is in conversation with Professor Briony Fer.

The Open University has collaborated with the artist Olivia Plender in her current solo show at Milton Keynes Gallery, providing archived TV programmes from the Art and Environment course, first presented in the late 1970s. These are shown on television screens as part of Plender’s installation in the Long Gallery which explores the use of television as an educational resource (see below). Over the course of 2012 the exhibition will be travelling to the Arnolfini Gallery Bristol and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow.

Discussion of the work of Daria Martin from the past 10 years; work explores the historical ideal of the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ or total artwork in order to create new frictions.

Paganism is a new religion with ancient roots. In this talk Graham Harvey introduces the influences and contexts of contemporary Pagan life. He examines the dynamic tension between esoteric and animistic sources that influence different kinds of Paganism. This talk introduced a film by Olivia Plender about intentional communities celebrating nature.