Corby's First Grow Festival Brings Town Centre To Life With Outdoor Arts This Summer

A brand new outdoor arts festival is being launched in Corby this Summer. Commissioned by Made in Corby and co-produced by The Core at Corby Cube, Grow 2018 takes place on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 July. Inspired by the theme of water, the festival will animate Corby's town centre with performances, experiences and workshops throughout the weekend, including installations and performances from Sound Intervention, Eye Music Trust and Acrojou.

The town centre will be filled with walkabout acts and shows for all the family. From boats on the water to the creatures that live under it, there will be an imaginary water-filled world of adventure, with storytelling, performances and music. Grow will play with the landlocked nature of Corby as well as its largest body of water; the boating lake. Visitors will uncover hidden surprises as they sail through the woods to a family area submerged by the boating lake - which will also host a spectacular early-evening event.

Among the highlights of the weekend will be the Eye Music Trust's intriguing Colourscape installation by the side of the Boating Lake, where people of all ages and abilities can explore intense light, colour and space in 56 interlinked chambers, encountering unusual musical experiences during a multisensory journey that represents the musical sounds of the human body. In addition, on the Saturday evening the Eye Music Trust's spectacular Music of the Spheres will be found floating on the water, providing an ethereal music and aerial dance display.

A brand new sound composition on the theme of water, created especially for this year's Grow Festival by Sound Intervention using their unique Shimmer sound system, can be found on the path through the woods to the boating lake. With the use of audio transducers, 12 copper-alloy cymbals will be transformed into speakers emitting sounds of drips, skimming stones, waterfalls, ice and steam. Low frequency sounds are added by speakers hidden in the landscape.

Street performances around the town include Acrojou's Frantic, featuring spectacular acrobatics and dance-theatre, choreographed around a wheel, with a hidden water system for a joyous finale danced in the pouring rain. Polled as audience favourite by Xtrax at Greenwich and Docklands International Festival in 2014, Frantic has toured extensively, both in the UK and internationally, for the last four years. Among the many other performances are Avanti Display's The Spurting Man, comic show Dick Danger, Rhubarb Theatre's The Big Dippers and The Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band.

On Sunday the inaugural Grow Festival People's Stage features local musicians, choirs, bands, community groups and spoken word artists, with performances programmed by the festival's Community Panel. The People's Stage will be hosted by Embrace Radio and is sponsored by All About Family.

This year's festival is presented in association with Anglian Water, a partnership designed to highlight the environmental and sustainability issues around the growing need of water. Over the weekend, Anglian Water will be offering fun and informative activities, demonstrating the importance of caring for our water sources and infrastructure.

Grow 2018 is the first of a series of three annual outdoor festivals commissioned by Made in Corby as part of The Creative People and Places programme funded by Arts Council England through the National Lottery. As one of the fastest growing borough outside of London, Corby looks forward to these three festivals aptly inspired by themes of water, light and food - all essential ingredients for growth.

Further details about the festival can be found on the website www.growcorby.co.uk.

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