Teachers union campaign threatens recorder torture

The Primary Teachers’ Union NZEI Te Riu Roa, alongside creative partners Bad Magic, have taken a new approach to strike negotiations: they’re threatening to send Kiwi kids home with recorder homework.

Make It Stop is a playful campaign designed to turn the recorder into a symbol of support for education staff. And it reminds everyone just how much power our teachers hold.

Branded recorders and incorrect transcriptions

The film stars Kura Forrester (from the TVNZ show Educators) who lays down the threat by asking kids what songs they’d like to learn for homework. Suggestions include Creed, Baby Shark, Taylor Swift, and anything by Nickelback. Zoe McIntosh directed, and it was produced by Jimena Murray and Ben Dailey at Sweetshop.

A nationwide OOH campaign featuring imagery you just can’t not hear, was shot by Troy Goodall and produced by Fern Holloway at Match.

Branded recorders and songbooks (with songs transcribed incorrectly to make them extra annoying), were sent to some of the country’s most well-known musicians. Many offered to butcher their own songs in the name of progress.

Show your solidarity

All activity drives to makeitstop.co.nz, which houses wrongly transcribed sheet music, awful soundtracks for school newsletters and presentations, and offers up myriad ways to make noise for teachers, including a simple way to send punishing recorder music directly to your local MP.

The hope is to give anyone who care about education a fun and easy way to show their solidarity with teachers, and give them more bargaining power in negotiations.

NZEI Te Riu Roa lead negotiator Liam Rutherford says, “We’re hoping that when parents and communities see the video they’ll laugh and share it and also sign our petition for our claims – we want to get all our negotiations over the line because our working conditions are our children’s learning conditions.”

Bad Magic creative director Tom Darlow adds: “I deeply regret making this campaign. The amount of recorder I’ve been subjected to since we began is eye watering. Ear watering? Gross. Anyway, my heart goes out to every music teacher in the country.”

Credits

• Bad Magic
• Hearts & Science
• Sweetshop
• Match
• Liquid Studios
• AO Studios
• DAOS Consulting
• With special shout out to sound guy Mark Storey, for whom this was easily the worst job of his career.