The Stables

The Stables is a live music venue at Wavendon, founded in 1970 by the jazz musicians John Dankworth and Cleo Laine in the former stable block of their home. Run by the registered charity Wavendon Allmusic Plan, it stages more than four hundred concerts a year across jazz, folk, classical, rock, pop and world music, together with a substantial education programme of workshops and youth activities. The site has two performance spaces: the Jim Marshall Auditorium, seating just under four hundred, and the smaller Stage 2 for intimate gigs. Decades on from its founding, it remains one of the more significant independent music venues in the region and is not part of any commercial chain. It also runs the biennial IF: Milton Keynes International Festival. As a single-site, charity-run going concern, it sits firmly within the independent cultural landscape of north Buckinghamshire.