Future Plans: Privatisation Blues

Banner Theatre & Ground Zero Productions: Privatisation Blues

A new project for public service trade unions and their members

Birmingham-based Banner Theatre and Canada’s Ground Zero Productions of Edmonton are planning a new international multimedia theatre production (with educational workshops) about the global economic crisis and the threats to public services in both Canada and the UK from governments bent on using privatisation to “mend” broken national economies.

Banner and Ground Zero have been working with trade unions for decades, making working-class experience the core of their productions and touring their shows to community and trade union audiences to build campaigns of resistance, raise awareness and understanding, and win over people’s hearts and minds.

The Context
The world is being gripped by a global economic crisis caused primarily by the relentless application by western governments of neo-liberal economic policies that have spread havoc around the world over the past 25 years. These policies seek to marketise and privatise everything, undermining workers’ hard-won wages and conditions in the developed economies, and impoverishing many third-world countries as a result of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes.

In Britain, the National Health Service, Royal Mail, schools and other public services are all at risk. In Canada, the Conservative government is building Public-Private Partnerships into its economic stimulus package and raising revenues by attempting to sell off government assets.

The Content
Banner and Ground Zero will create the show using real-life experience from the UK and Canada, beginning with a story of the struggle by the UK Communication Workers Union (CWU) against the privatisation of Royal Mail. Banner is also talking to other UK public sector unions as other potential collaborators.

Each segment of the new production will be about 15 minutes long, blending interview clips with songs in a world-music style. We are starting with two stories – one from Britain and one from Canada – and the final show will comprise five or six stories in total. In 2010 we aim to tour the show in the UK with a later tour in Canada.

Some of the songs, including video ‘actuality’, will be produced in advance as a music video for distribution on the web, via YouTube and union websites.

The Style
Banner and Ground Zero have collaborated over almost a decade to create an innovative and accessible form of live performance, based on a powerful interweaving of music, song and documentary video ‘actuality’. Our performances have played to standing ovations in the UK, Canada and in Europe.

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For more information and/or to discuss this exciting new project contact Banner’s Artistic Director Dave Rogers on 0787 884 8695 or 0121 682 0730 or by email

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