You can watch this performance anytime you like!

Click on http://www.superchannel.org and select the 'Let's Go Global' channel. You'll find a recording of the performance in the archive.

This ambitious and imaginative project aimed to give young people in Manchester an opportunity to explore their own responses to issues surrounding the impact of new advances in genetics and nanotechnology, and create and tour an original new piece of visual theatre performance from those responses.

Project Funders: The Wellcome Trust (PULSE inititiative) and Arts Council England.

Project Partners: Let's go Global Internet TV, Manchester Museum, Contact, Green Room

Ten research, training and devising sessions at Manchester Museum were organised, preceded by two recruitment sessions at the Museum, where interested young people could find out about, and sign up for, the project. At the end of the ten sessions, an intensive production week took place at the Green Room, Manchester. A short tour of the final production was organised. Participating venues were
· The Gateway Theatre, Chester
· The Worden Arts Centre, Worden Park, Leyland
· The Met, Bury

"In recent years advocates of a new eugenic future speak with enthusiasm of a "post-human" future in which the health, appearance, personality, cognitive ability, sensory capacity and life-span of our children have all been genetically modified. They celebrate a world in which humanity has been genetically engineered into sub-species, the "GenRich" and the "Naturals." It embraces commitments to science and technology as exempt from social control. It is imperative that we understand the challenge that this new ideology represents and prepare ourselves to counter it by affirming humanity in all its beauty, mystery and wonder."Richard Hayes - Center for Genetics and Society (http://www.genetics-and-society.org)

"It's easy to imagine that a man who wishes to enhance his artistic side may instead find himself getting more in touch with his inner schizophrenic. And who should be held to account for that? To what degree should medical professionals be responsible for saving people from their own ill-advised impulses?" (http://www.geneforum.org)

If you have shockwave, and you would like to try a practical online DNA workshop, click here

Click here for a simple guide to genetics provided by The New Internationalist Magazine

Nanotechnology deals with material on the scale of a few billionths of a metre, or 80,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Only small quantities of nanoparticles are currently produced in Britain. The first production plant dedicated to making nanoparticles, owned by the defence research company Qinetiq in Farnborough, Hampshire was switched on last summer and is capable of producing a few kilos of material an hour. Some nanoparticles are already widespread in the air we breathe, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels and vehicle exhaust fumes. In a busy street, each breath we take contains around 25m nanoparticles.

All text and images © Dynamic New Animation 2002