A brave new town

As the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra began playing Mosolov’s The Iron Foundry, the sky to one side of the stage glowed red. Stage right, a rainbow appeared as if to reveal a brighter future. A gasp, followed by a throng of raised mobile phones, captured a unique and poetic moment. Billed as Big Summer Night Out, this was a first and a brave, radical effort to engage people across Corby and begin to dismantle some of the barriers to taking part in the arts. The venue was Corby Football Club, a team near the top of the Evo-Stik Southern Premier League, with an ambitious new board of community-focused directors.

Encouraging Corby people to see, experience and take part in high-quality arts and cultural activities is the aim of the three-year, £1m, Made in Corby Creative People and Places programme, funded by Arts Council England. Big Summer Night Out sold out, with standing room only. More than 30% of the audience had not previously been to events at the town’s theatre, the Core at Corby Cube. The average ticket yield has also surprised and delighted many. This event proved that many more Corby people do have an appetite for new and exciting arts activity.

The aspiration has been for cultural and community regeneration to go hand in hand with physical growth to create integrated communities

Corby is an immigrant town with an industrial heritage as a steel town with a proud working class history and traditions rooted in its original Scottish population. More recently, new immigrant communities have given the borough a distinctive cultural footprint. The last 15 years have seen massive, ambitious regeneration and expansion. Town centre redevelopment includes a new civic building which also houses the Core at Corby Cube, an arts centre developing a national reputation for its work with young people, and a multiplex cinema with restaurants and bars ready to open next year. Industrial and commercial investment and new housing mean that Corby is set to double in size by 2030, making it one of the fastest growing places in the UK.

Over the last five years, Corby has been a test-bed for arts-led regeneration with the local authority and its partners embracing culture as one of the drivers of growth and regeneration. The aspiration has been for cultural and community regeneration to go hand in hand with physical growth to create integrated communities and a better quality of life for Corby people. For all this cultural ambition, Corby has a number of social and economic challenges. Low wages, unemployment, poor health and disability and a lack of public transport in the evenings mean that many people find it hard to access cultural activity.

We are ambitious about tackling these barriers, but also realistic about the challenge. The funded programme is for three years, but we are planning our impact over ten. Our guiding principle is that arts programmes must be forged and honed by Corby’s own communities, artists and partners, supported by excellent national and international artists, producers and programmers. The Made in Corby consortium provides leadership and the focus of the programme reflects the needs of the wider community. This consortium includes Corby Unity, a community group with representation across the town, Groundwork Northamptonshire, the Core at Corby Cube, Corby Community Arts and Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership. Other partners providing support are the local artistic community, the University of Northampton, Tresham College, Corby Borough Council and Northamptonshire County Council.

Our current programme strands are Big Days In and Big Nights Out. Two well attended Big Days In arts taster events, led by some of Corby’s brilliant local artists, were held at community centres in October under the national Fun Palaces umbrella, with subsidised tickets for Big Nights Out at the Core at Corby Cube to encourage people to try something new. The legacy of these activities is already visible. There is a new arts venue in town with collaboration between Corby Football Club and the town’s Rooftop Gallery, plus talk of more arts and cultural events being held at the football club. The Deep Roots Tall Trees choir continues to grow in confidence and is in demand, making guest appearances at concerts across the county. We are also planning two exciting, major commissions that will involve Corby’s communities for 2015 and 2016.

In the New Year we will recruit community panels to drive activities forward, to check, challenge, provide focus and direction. Noticeboards installed in all estates and villages will improve access to information and the consortium is negotiating with bus operators, including Electric Corby, to provide a subsidised Arts Bus facility so that people can get to events in and beyond borough boundaries.

Made in Corby is rooted structurally, culturally and emotionally in place. It is taking shape and being promoted to ensure that secure, sustainable and significant change happens. With the wealth of local and regional support, the programme offers permission to dream, try the new, imagine and be part of and build on the town’s reputation as a creative, making place. Our aim is to have helped establish Corby as a destination that focuses on arts and culture, and to see that ripple into every aspect of the life of the borough.

Simon Mutsaars is Executive Director of Groundwork Northamptonshire which leads the Made in Corby consortium.
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