Regent Theatre & Dudson Limited Win at Jaguar Land Rover Awards

Last week in front of a packed Birmingham Town Hall, Dudson Limited and The Regent Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent won the Jaguar Land Rover Arts and Business Sustained Partnership Award, in association with Rolls-Royce plc. The award is awarded to an established, on-going partnership that continues to set standards in creative arts-business collaborations.

This year's competition was tougher than ever with nominations from a huge variety of arts projects including sculpture, music, museums and archives, art and theatre. The Midlands is one of the largest of the Arts & Business regions covering Staffordshire, Birmingham and Coventry, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and Derbyshire.

Dudson Limited and The Regent Theatre were also runners up in the Arts & Business Innovation Award in partnership with Clark Associates.

Celebrating 210 years this year, Dudson continues to be a world-leading specialist in the manufacture and supply of ceramic tableware to the international hospitality industry and remains a privately owned family business, the oldest in the UK tableware industry.

The Regent Theatre is operated by the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG), who have a total of 39 venues across the UK. ATG is also one of the country's foremost theatre producers and has been behind some of the most successful and innovative productions in Britain and internationally.

In 1999, Stoke-on-Trent City Council asked a number of local businesses to invest in the development of a Cultural Quarter for the people of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. Ambassador Theatre Group was awarded the operating license for The Regent Theatre and a long-term relationship was started between Dudson and the theatre.

Initially, Dudson received a return on their Cultural Quarter investment which included special offers and a small number of complimentary theatre tickets for their staff.

In 2007, they supplied The Regent Theatre and Victoria Hall with over 3000 items of hotel tableware to set up a Functions and Events business, allowing it to generate a source of income from conferences and events.

Following this investment, Dudson then went on to showcase their products in ATG's London theatres, where ATG attracts world-class actors from the UK and America, royalty and London business hospitality.

In the latest chapter of this unique business partnership, Dudson are supplying The Regent Theatre with 1000 mugs over the next two years, which the theatre has commissioned Stoke-on-Trent College Manufacturing & Product Design students to design. The first limited edition mug will be produced by Dudson and retailed in November this year.

The money generated from the sale of mugs will fund workshops and projects for other young people and will be delivered by The Regent Theatre's highly successful Creative Learning department.

The Dudson family's commitment to the regeneration of Stoke-on-Trent and enhancing the lives of their workers and the local community has been key to this long term relationship. The commitment of the Ambassador Theatre Group to working with local businesses with the appointment of Development Managers in its theatres has enabled the theatre to manage arts and business relationships at the highest levels; producing long term commitment from business and innovative ideas to generate funds for community projects and young people.