Success Cubed

The Corby Cube, a £30m ‘civic hub’, opened this week in Northamptonshire. The building includes The Core theatre, The Labs studio and performance space, and The Base workshop and meeting space, as well as a Council ‘one-stop-shop’ and public library. The Core theatre will be run in partnership with Northampton’s Royal & Derngate theatres, and will produce at least two professional in-house productions a year. A new independent charitable trust has been established to run the venue: Corby Theatre Trust is working in partnership with Northampton Theatres Trust (which operates Royal & Derngate). The two theatres will share back office facilities in order to remain cost-effective. Funded by Corby Borough Council, East Midlands Development Agency, the Department of Communities and Local Government, the Homes and Communities Agency and Northamptonshire County Council, working together with the North Northants Development Company, work on the Cube was begun in January 2008, having been runner-up in the 2007 LEAF Awards for the Best Public Building Design of the Year. The Building Research Establishment has awarded the Cube an Environmental Assessment Method rating of ‘Excellent’ – it is the only theatre in the UK to receive this rating.