Every single member of society is a potential member of Chickenshed – its 2,000-strong waiting list notwithstanding. The people behind the London children’s and young people’s theatre company believe that no one, regardless of race or social circumstances, be they middle-class, working-class, rich, poor, quiet, extrovert, able-bodied or in a wheelchair, should be excluded from the performing arts. The company has a philosophy of – and is passionate about – inclusion. It would, if it could, include everybody.

So to see a production at the company’s purpose-built theatre in Southgate, north London, is to watch a microcosm of modern human life – representatives of all of us are there on stage with our different egos, talents, situations and world-views. Most of these productions are thoughtful but upbeat celebrations of the human spirit, the latest of which is SeaChange, a fable devised from answers to hundreds of questionnaires sent to children all around the world asking what each would do to change the world. In Chechnya, they want their country to be great again; in Swaziland, they want to be able to get safely to the well. SeaChange, which opens next week, suggests, cheeringly, that to the young, wherever they live, there is not such a gulf between aspiration and reality.