Week-long family arts festival to be held in Corby later this month

‘Family Arts Festival’ will start on Sunday, June 30, and culminate in a fantastic family fun day with festival collaborators the Pen Green Centre on Saturday, July 6.

The festival has been co-created with children from nurseries in Corby, who have been helping to select their favourite artists out of the exciting array of creatives who applied to be involved.

The festival opens with BoxClever, a unique afternoon of cardboard crafting developed with KHL Community Workshop, who are looking for dinosaur designers, castle craftsmen, bridge builders, and igloo architects (and their grown-ups) to get ambitious with them. People can design, build and play with their children during the afternoon session that even includes a free cup of tea.

There are lots more activities throughout the week of Monday, July 1, to Friday, July 5. Artsters, who went down a storm at last year’s festival, are back with paint, sensory resources, mark-making materials and collage for children to explore in their own way at Arran Community Centre.

The Hare and The Moon theatre show and lantern-making workshop will delight audiences at Corby Library and Groundwork Northamptonshire will be running a pop-up Wellies in the Woods session.

People can attempt to make the best den ever with Little TeePee Adventures by working together to build an exciting shapeshifting installation using an array of materials in the Grampian.

The Core at Corby Cube will also host a Disco Ducks takeover of their regular Little Ducks session complete with a sparkling glitterball, and there will be more lovely Storytelling at Corby Library.

Tom Briggs, producer at Made With Many, said: “Family Arts Festival is back with joyous events and ideas to enjoy with your family in Corby. We’ll be making lanterns, cardboard creations and dens in the week before returning to Pen Green rooms and gardens for another day-long fun day, filled with sock puppets, mysterious foxes, messy play and your chance to step into some arcade classics. We can’t wait to see you across a whole week of joy, surprise and discovery.”

On the main festival day at the Pen Green Centre on Saturday, July 6, the fun will kick off at 10am and run until 4pm where people can enjoy lots of activities and shows designed around families with children aged from 0 to 11. There will be things the whole family can enjoy, with many activities suitable for children with additional needs or complex needs in mind.

People can join BareFooted Arts for Move, Sway & Swirl, a magical outdoor adventure with music, movement and storytelling outdoors.

Make Your Own Sock Puppet: The Oddest Of Socks is an exploration of ‘The Little Launderette’, an immersive space made up of cardboard washing machines, washing lines with pegs to match and socks to sort and bubbles to pop, where people can also meet a host of puppet characters

Options also include Climb inside a den for Cub with Carbon Theatre for an exciting story about how big families really are, or people can immerse themselves in The Glasshouse, a structure made from recycled materials and solar-powered combination of light, sound, art and technology.

Also on offer is Earth Calling Bear-Stronaught,an intergalactic, musical adventure, full of space snails, snow balls and moon cheese sandwiches or ARCADE Mini, a joyful interactive performance where the participants become classic computer game characters.

There will be more opportunity to play with the Artsters as well as At The Seaside Messy Play to build sandcastles, explore cornflour coral reefs and the sensory sunshine tray.

In the garden there will be more storytelling, fun family activities with Pen Green, make-and-take crafts and seed-bomb making with the Groundwork Northamptonshire team to attract pollinators into gardens.

The International Bubble Artist and The Highland Joker will also delight audiences with a giant bubble activity, creating thousands of soap bubbles of all shapes and sizes, allowing the children to chase, pop and play.

Tickets for the first activity, BoxClever are available now, with more tickets to follow. For more details or to buy tickets visit linktr.ee/madewithmany