A full plate

Located in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter (‘because it seemed an energetic place to be’) Stan's Cafe (SC) is a creative company with theatre at its heart. A quick perusal of their website shows that they are keeping busy. The company is currently gearing up for a new touring production of The Capital, a wordless play about life in the big city inspired by conversations with the Economics department at Warwick University. Additionally, they run a wide range of youth projects and facilitate countless other artistic enterprises, incorporating graphic design, poetry, and more.

I spoke to Craig Stephens, associate director, to find out more about their education programme. According to Stephens, the guiding principle beneath all of their work is of a complete merging of education with everything else they do. It's not regarded as a separate by-product but as something at the very heart of all their creative work. Nor is it restricted to drama-based projects: much of what they offer to schools and other audiences is more bespoke than the conventional schools tour. Rather, SC think of themselves as assisting teachers (‘who are themselves being creative every hour of the day’, Stephens is quick to point out) in coming up with creative solutions to gaps in the school curriculum. These don't have to be big solutions, and drama is definitely not always the right answer – some recent projects have been more focussed on language or visual art. An exciting new collaboration with Billesley Primary School is one example, which will see the production of a book entitled ‘What is a school?’ Different year groups will come up with a chapter each, while an editorial team of pupils have been involved in the process from the start and recruiting the graphic designer.