Corby will be growing to accommodate another 16,000 homes in the next 12 years, adding further to its history of absorption and mixing of cultures. This project explores migration and identity through creative use of historic material. The historic material will be used to inspire the community’s memories and responses to change.
This project uses photographic collections, not previously in the public domain, as a catalyst for revealing and capturing attitudes and emotions connected with population growth and change through the interventions of writers and other artists. Boxes of uncatalogued photographs in the Seabourne Collection at the Northamptonshire Record Office, together with thirty years of photographic material at Corby Community Arts capture Corby as it turned from rural village to steel town and on to post-industrial challenges. This material represents several generations of Corby’s community, each collected in response to successive evolutions in the town’s identity. We have this opportunity to explore planned development in the context of Corby’s 20th century history and to facilitate artistic engagement with this history.
The collections will be catalogued, packed and digitized making them accessible. Volunteers will be recruited, trained and supported to capture the stories behind the images, and to develop a community heritage website which will host the material from the two collections and collect new material from the people of Corby. Volunteers will also catalogue, pack, and digitize material. Selecting which images to conserve at Corby Community Arts will involve an archivist and volunteers in research resulting in archival guidelines for community heritage projects.
A programme of working with community groups explores the emotional connections people have to this unique place. The project sees communities engaging with some of the best writing talent using historic collections to explore how the town and its people are perceived and presented. Both writers, artists working in other media, and our partner organisations have been challenged to develop collaborative new ways of working with new audiences.
A ‘Writer in Residence’ on a 12 month contract is a central part of the project. The writer in residence, supporting local writers, will use the visual source material to create new work, articulate a sense of place and celebrate a changing town. The writer in residence joins a collaborative process working with digital artists and staff from the heritage centre to take this work into the public realm through performance, projection, soundscape, voice and music. Two youth groups (one from Northampton and one from Corby) have been engaged to enter into a writing-led dialogue around the theme of migration and amalgamation of people and cultures, resulting in two short films and an exhibition. This will be presented in Northampton Museum and Corby Heritage Centre.
The culmination of the project will be a multi-site celebratory exhibition and event, which will take place in summer 2011 to coincide with Northamptonshire’s ‘Igniting Ambition’ festivities.
The legacy of the project will be a permanently accessible image bank at the Heritage Centre; new writing on Corby; a touring exhibition; audio tour; and a community archive website which volunteers will have been trained to build and maintain, allowing Corby residents in the future to provide comment on their own history.
