Lara Croft was created by Core Design in 1996, based in Ashbourne Road, Derby, 30 years ago. Now, a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign hopes raise £30,000 to bring a nine feet statue of her to a permanent new home in Derby Market Hall to celebrate the city’s role in video game folklore.
The sculpture was originally part of the Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience in Camden, London, but has been in storage since the attraction closed in 2023.
Luke Earle, who hosts the annual Tomb Raider Day in Derby, said: “Just as Nottingham has Robin Hood, Derby has Lara Croft, and it would be great to have a statue of her in the city center to remind everyone that she was born here in the city.”
The campaign is seeking to raise £30,000 and the fundraiser – which was set up on Saturday – has already raised over £16,000 ($23,000 USD), mainly from Tomb Raider fans. The plan is to place the fibreglass monument on the balcony at the Osnabruck Square end of the Market Hall in the city center.
Earle hopes the city of Derby can help out in bringing the statue to the city, but at the rate things are going, they may not need much help from them. The Kickstarter is already a bit over half funded, with 21 days to go in the campaign. The Kickstarter finishes on September 14, 2026.
“There is huge untapped potential in the Tomb Raider story and we have hundreds of people who come to Derby every year to explore the place where the game was made,” Earle said. “This year’s event is the biggest ever and it’s already a sell-out, which shows that Tomb Raider and Lara Croft are as big as ever. Fans have been asking about having a statue to visit for years and with the Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience having ended and this statue being in storage, it’s too perfect an opportunity for us to miss. The response so far has been amazing, but now we’re hoping that Derby will get behind the campaign and raise the rest of the money we need to bring Lara home.”
Tombraider was an instant hit, due to its groundbreaking gameplay, visuals and the unique notion of having a female protagonist, campaign organisers said. The franchise went on to sell tens of millions of copies worldwide and Lara became a cultural icon, celebrated in comics and even in motion pictures. Angelina Jolie famously portrayed the adventuresome heiress in Lara Croft: Tombraider and Lara Croft: Tombraider – The Cradle of Life in 2001 and 2003, followed by Alicia Vikander in the 2018 reboot.
