11. Investing in the Arts

This section is a first draft to be built upon. It sets out a direction and a headline proposal; the detail will be developed with Corby's artists, venues, schools, community groups and the organisations named below.

Corby has a cultural story that most towns would envy and few outsiders know. It is a Scottish town in the English Midlands, built by steelworkers who brought their pipe bands, their Highland Gathering and their language with them. It has the Core at Corby Cube — a purpose-built theatre — the Corby Heritage Centre in the Old Village, a strong tradition of community music, dance and sport, and in East Carlton Countryside Park and Rockingham Castle two of the region's best outdoor settings. What it has lacked is investment, confidence, and a stage on which to put all of that together.

In July 2026 that began to change. Corby was named as one of fifteen towns shortlisted, from nearly 400 entries, for the first UK Town of Culture, a Department for Culture, Media and Sport competition for 2028. The shortlisting brought £60,000 to develop the full bid, which is due at the end of November 2026; the winner, to be announced in early 2027, receives £3 million to deliver a six-month cultural programme, and two runners-up receive £250,000 each. The bid has brought together North Northamptonshire Council, Corby's arts collectives, business groups, Tresham College and the town's sixth forms, and residents themselves — asked by postcard what they love about Corby.

Whatever the result, the bid has done something the town needed: it has made Corby take its own culture seriously, and it has made others notice. This section is about making sure that does not stop in 2027 or 2028.

11.1 A regular Corby arts festival

Our headline proposal is a regular Corby arts festival — annual, town-wide, and permanent — built directly on the work, the partnerships and the programme assembled for the Town of Culture bid.

• If Corby wins, the 2028 programme becomes the first festival and the £3 million funds it; the task is then to make it recur, on a smaller but sustainable scale, every year afterwards.
• If Corby does not win, the festival is how the bid's legacy is kept: the programme drafted for 2028 is delivered anyway, over a shorter period, funded from the sources below, so that the effort and the partnerships are not wasted.

What we have in mind, to be developed with the people who will run it:

• A festival with a Corby identity. Steel, Scotland and the new town: the Highland Gathering, the pipe bands and the Scottish heritage of the town, alongside the music, dance, food and languages of the communities who have arrived since. Corby is one of the most diverse towns in the county and its festival should show it.
• Across the whole town, not one venue. The Core and the Cube as the anchor, but with events in the Old Village, at East Carlton and Rockingham Castle, in Willow Place and the town centre, and in parks and community centres in every neighbourhood — so that the festival goes to people rather than asking them to come to it.
• Made in Corby. A commissioning strand for Corby artists, makers, musicians and writers; a schools and Tresham College strand so that every young person in the town takes part in making something; and paid roles and training for local people in production, technical and events work.
• Building the audience for the rest of the year. The festival should be the shop window for a year-round programme at the Core, the Heritage Centre and community venues, not a substitute for one.

11.2 Building the foundations

A festival needs more than a fortnight of events. Alongside it we propose:

• An arts and culture strategy for Corby, prepared with Arts Council England and the region's cultural organisations, setting out what the town wants its cultural life to be by 2041 and how the festival, the venues and the education offer fit together.
• Investment in venues and spaces: the Core at Corby Cube maintained and marketed as a regional venue; affordable studio, rehearsal and maker space for artists and groups in empty town centre units, linked to the Town Centre Living Quarter in Section 3.2 and the independent retail proposals in Section 10.2; and the Corby Heritage Centre supported as the home of the town's story.
• Arts in every school: a Corby cultural education partnership so that music, drama, dance and visual arts are available to every child in the Growth Area regardless of school or income, with the festival as its annual showcase.
• Public art and the public realm: a percentage-for-art principle on major developments, so that West Corby, Priors Hall and the town centre schemes leave something for the town to look at as well as live in.
• Funding: Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants and place partnership funding; the UK Town of Culture prize or runner-up award; Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy contributions towards cultural facilities; business sponsorship from Corby's large employers; and successor programmes to the Towns Fund and Pride in Place. A standing festival should aim to cover its core costs from a mix of these rather than depend on any one.

11.3 What Corby will press for

• The Town of Culture bid partners to commit now, before the result is known, to a Corby arts festival in 2028 and every year afterwards.
• An independent Corby festival and culture trust — the bid already envisages an independent body for its legacy — constituted in 2027 to run the festival and hold the strategy.
• Arts Council England invited to Corby to agree a place partnership and a route to sustained funding for the Core.
• The arts and culture strategy for Corby adopted within the first phase of this plan and reported on annually in Infrastructure Watch.

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