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What great things happen when the TUC supports the arts
PAUL FARMER speaks to Dave Rogers, artistic director of Banner Theatre, Britain’s foremost workers' theatre & music company on their 50th anniversary
(L-R) Mike Bethel and Dave Rogers perform Saltley Gate To Party Gate, Shipley, October 2022; (R) Banner Theatre take to the streets in the 1970s [Dean Whiskens / Stuart Brown]

ON November 1, an event at Bridgwater Arts Centre will celebrate 40 years since the great Miners’ Strike in the British coalfields – and the 50th birthday of Birmingham’s political theatre company, Banner Theatre.

This longevity is an astonishing achievement for any theatre company, but for a political theatre group it’s pretty much superhuman. 

Dave Rogers has been involved with Banner Theatre since 1974 and is now artistic director. How has Banner survived?

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