Future Plans

The Future Makers

Banner Theatre propose to work with UNITE the Union, to develop a 40 minute in-depth video ballad production ‘The Future Makers’ (working title), which will focus on young people’s dreams and frustrations about their future in the current era. The production will fuse video interviews, with music, song and drama and will tour to youth, union and community audiences across the UK. The show will be linked with popular education workshops and will be flexible in format designed for performance in a wide variety of locations including youth and community centres, union educational courses, rallies and conferences.

‘The Future Makers’ will be based on in-depth video interviews with young people who use youth services, members of UNITE and young people in the wider community. It will also include interviews with the emerging new generation of activists: student organisers who helped to build the magnificent student movement of university, sixth form and school students in autumn 2010 - young people protesting at the closure of youth and community facilities and young activists involved in emerging protest groups such as UK Uncut.

This government’s policies towards young peoples’ services are having devastating effects on their present and future lives, with the axing of youth services across the UK. Youth unemployment is now approaching 1 million, double the national average. Rather than demonising young people as ‘feral’, ‘mindless thugs’ whose actions are indicative of a wider ‘moral collapse', the show will seek to explore how young peoples’ insights into their own lives can provide the basis for a production that engages young people in creating a more hopeful and supportive future for themselves and others. The production will build on Banner’s research and knowledge base developed in creating its current union sponsored musical documentary, ‘Fighting the Cuts’, which focuses on the multiple effects of the government’s draconian cuts on public sector services.

The Battle of Red Deer

Banner is collaborating with Ground Zero Productions in Canada to create a new show focusing on the successful battle for unionisation, with the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE) in Canada. The project will focus on campaigning work in Red Deer and examine the developing struggle against privatisation and cuts in Canada. Initial interviews, and some initial work on scripts, were carried out in August 2011, and the project will continue throughout 2012.

Banner Theatre is touring to venues and communities, and at rallies and demonstrations, across the country. See our website at www.bannertheatre.co.uk for full details of our tour.

To book the Band, phone 0845 458 1909, or email info@bannertheatre.co.uk

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