Banner Theatre - Latest News

The latest news and information from Banner Theatre

Joint Banner / Warwick University success

A joint application by Banner Theatre and Warwick University’s School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies to the Arts and Humanities Research Council has secured a Collaborative Doctoral Award, providing funding to enable someone to undertake a three-year full-time study of Banner, leading to a PhD.

The person appointed will investigate the impact of participation in Banner Theatre’s performance-based, issue-led productions. The lead question for the research is:

Can processes involved in creating, participating in and viewing Banner Theatre’s performance-based and creative educational projects influence a dynamic interaction between perceptions of and the economic, social and political realities of migration, multiculturalism and globalisation, in order to enhance social awareness and community cohesion in local and regional communities?

The deadline for applications is Friday 30 May; interviews will be held in late June.

For more information visit www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/

More funding awards and the new show

Banner has been successful with two more funding awards since our last newsletter. We have secured grants of £10k from Urban Living in West Bromwich and £5k from Birmingham City Council, respectively, to work with Polish migrant and other communities in Handsworth to create a 30-minute video and performance piece for later in the year.

This mini-video ballad, interweaving video, interviews, film, live music and song, will then become part of our new production, We Share the Same Sky, which will now begin touring early in 2009.

Also featuring in the new show will be a mini-video ballad developed in Sheffield with European Social Fund support from the Academy for Community Leadership at Northern College in Barnsley. The company gave a preview performance in Pitsmoor in late April to an audience drawn from interviewees for the production, which features the real-life story of an Afghani asylum seeker and a group of Sheffield people who have formed a campaign group to support him.

Working with trade unions

Partly as a result of the joint project we are running with the West Midlands Workers Educational Association to use video, performance and popular education techniques in trade union education classes, Banner is now planning a new show (working title, Privatisation Blues) about privatisation, to be developed in partnership with a number of trade unions for 2010.

Banner has strong relationships with unions and trade union organisations in many parts of the country. In October 2006 and 2007 we were booked Unison and the Northern TUC in the North East of England to do performances and workshops in schools and community venues as part of an ongoing anti-racist strategy. And last month we performed at a conference for the London regional Fire Brigades Union officials. We have also performed at union annual conferences and are frequently booked by trade union councils.

We have begun talking to trade unions, following a London performance in March at the South Bank Centre, where we made contact with the South East Region TUC and, through Labour Campaign Group MP John McDonnell, with Hillingdon Trades Union Council. Discussions are also taking place with Unison, the Communications Workers Union and the GMB.

More Mobiles touring and the DVD

“They Get Free Mobiles . . . Don’t They?” continues to tour this year, with performances scheduled for Refugee Week and after, with gigs in Luton (14 June), Exeter (16 June), Mansfield (17 June), Enfield (18 June), Liverpool (19 June), Coventry (20 June) and Halifax (21 June). Other performances follow in Middlesbrough (25 June), Peterborough (26 June) and Bedford (27 June). Full details are on the website at www.bannertheatre.co.uk

Further touring of the show is planned for the autumn, with a week at the Bergen International Festival in Norway looking likely and return visits to North East England. If you are interested in booking a performance for your trades council, trade union, local authority, racial equality council, school, college or community, please get in touch on 0845 458 1909 or via info@bannertheatre.co.uk

A DVD of the show is available (£12 plus £2 post & packing) from the Banner office.

Banner people

Sadly, Banner tour organiser Pam Bishop left the company in April. Pam joined the company in November 2004, helping organise the company’s slightly delayed 30th anniversary celebrations at the Library Theatre in April 2005. She also brought a strong musical dimension to the company, as a longstanding concertina player and someone with a knowledge of Banner from the very early days, when the company emerged from the Grey Cock Folk Club in the mid-1970s.
Pam has been a great source of strength for the company, helping consolidate and develop our touring schedule, which increased to over 70 performances a year in 2007/8 and generating earned income from touring of around £50k. We wish Pam the best of luck with her new venture of developing and editing a national folk music publication and continuing to run the Traditional Arts Team. She will also be continuing to maintain the Banner website.

Replacing Pam is Stuart Brown, who worked with the company in the 1990s, cowriting the 1996 production Criminal Justice and, more recently, directing our “They Get Free Mobiles . . . Don’t They?” production. Also re-joining the company is former performer and administrator Jacqueline Contré, who is working to develop renewed links with trade unions in the run-up to the new privatisation show in 2010. For more information on any of these items, contact the Banner office on 0845 458 1909 or email info@bannertheatre.co.uk

You can also visit the website at www.bannertheatre.co.uk