2017 / 2018
60 Miles by Road or Rail started in August 2017. Theatre director Andy Routledge returned to his hometown of Northampton and wanted to cultivate a platform for Northamptonians of different generations to come together to question and strengthen their collective and individual relationships to the town.
He learnt that 2018 marked 50 years since the designation of Northampton becoming a New Town – an event that led to its rapid expansion as thousands of families were welcomed from overspill areas of London. It was a fundamental moment in the makeup of Northampton, and yet it was a story that seemed to be largely untold.
Andy brought together a team of local professional artists, and between them they interviewed 114 people about their experiences of Northampton becoming a New Town. Interviewees included members of the Northampton Development Corporation who oversaw the town’s expansion, some of the first residents to live in the newly built estates and who helped nurture the new communities, and Northamptonian natives who witnessed the town’s identity change very significantly and very quickly.
Whilst the creatives were drawing the various stories together, Northamptonshire County Council went bankrupt and severe cuts to its social services announced. The county was on the front page of The Guardian and The New York Times as an example of a local authority going bust due to the government’s austerity measures. The project took on a greater urgency with the anger of a town in crisis and had a great amount to say and contribute to our contemporary political landscape.
In September 2018 the artists previewed a new piece of theatre, titled 60 Miles by Road or Rail. It played to a sold-out home crowd at Royal & Derngate as part of their Generate programme for emerging artists. Following the success of both the production and the community processes leading up to it, the team started planning for next steps.
The 2018 activity was made possible due to public funding from Arts Council England, in addition to the Travers Foundation and the Unity Theatre Trust. It was supported by Generate: Royal & Derngate’s Artist Development Programme, in partnership with Warts and All Theatre’s With/By/For programme, Umbrella Fair Organisation and Northampton Past.
2019
Following the positive response to our activities throughout 2018, the team started thinking about how the project could evolve, and reach more people.
Following her role as the producer of the production in 2018, Courtenay Johnson joined the team as a co-project manager. Alongside Andy, they set up 60 Miles by Road or Rail as a limited company. Throughout 2019 Courtenay and Andy put together the programme for the 2020 activity. This included mounting a series of ambitious funding applications to Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, National Lottery Community Fund and Northamptonshire Community Foundation, and developing further links with local organisations and residents.
In addition to building on the arts and community activities that were started in 2018, they decided to begin exploring Corby, which was designated a New Town 18 years prior to Northampton.
Photo credit: Ben Gregory-Ring
2020
On 14th February 2020, 52 years to the day since Northampton’s New Town designation, the year-long project was launched. Sadly due to COVID-19 many of its activities were postponed…
Andy and Courtenay continued to keep the project alive however! They spoke with numerous people about their New Town experiences as part of Your Stories, both online and in person as part of Warts and All Theatre’s Heritage Fun Day at Delapré Abbey.
Andy also spoke with Lyn Gardner for The Stage’s ‘The Empty Space: What Should Have Opened This Week’ feature.
Photo credit: Courtenay Johnson
2021
The project relaunches…
After over a year of delays, the project was delivered across the second half of 2021. You can Read, Watch and Listen about all the project’s activities on our website.
Our activities included:
– New theatre production, 60 Miles by Road or Rail, at Royal & Derngate in September 2021. Made by local Northampton artists, this is available to stream online now.
– 25 Oral Histories conducted by 5 Oral History Society trained interviewers. These will shortly be available to listen to in full at the East Midlands Oral History Archive. You can hear short excerpts of them on our dedicated Oral History page.
– A documentary film about Northampton’s New Town legacy. Made in collaboration with Eight Engines, this was premiered at our Finale event at the Northampton Museum in December 2021.
– A photography exhibition by award-winning photographer Christian Sinibaldi. Made up of over 230 unrehearsed portraits capturing over 170 people in Northampton’s Eastern District, these were presented at a bespoke exhibition at Northampton Museum. These are available to view on our dedicated Instagram account. One of the images was selected for the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize Exhibition 2021 and 1854 Media Portrait of Britain awards. The portrait featured in numerous publications, including the BBC and the Guardian.
– Three Old Town New Town presentations by the New Town Heritage Research Network. The first event took place at Delapre Abbey, the second at Corby Rooftop Arts, and the final one at Northampton Museum as part of our Finale celebrations.
– We hosted Pop Up Heritage Open Days in the Grosvenor Centre in September 2021. Aimed at all ages, visitors were invited to pop in and join a team of local artists to add their memories of living in Northampton. Activities included making paper houses, flags and tags for our interactive floor map, adding to our timeline of past memories or hopes for Northampton’s future, and listening to our audio pieces, This is Home (Northampton) and Hometown (Corby) which were co-created by Subika Anwar-Khan and Ryan Leder and local residents. These audio pieces are both available to listen to on our website.
– We transformed our website into a curated digital platform where residents could share their experiences of Northampton and Corby through written pieces. You can continue to share these on the website right now!
You can check out all of our project outputs by visiting Read. Watch. Listen. or reading our programme from The Finale event in December 2021.
Photo Credit Maksim Podorozkin
