I spent two days last week in Cunningham Hill Infants School in St Albans where I worked with 5 classes of Y1s and Y2s as a visiting paper engineer. I brought along collapsible cardboard frameworks for the children to use to create giant pop-up structures.
As well as working on small-scale individual pop-ups, they worked as a team on the larger pieces. Each class used a story they’d been studying and, in the case of year 2, the challenge was to connect Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Twelfth Night, and paper engineering.
The solution was to produce stage-like structures representing the setting for each play which, believe or not, still folded flat by the end.
I left each class to continue working as I moved on to the next, but nothing prepared me for what I was shown at the end of day 2 (see the bottom photos).
It has to be said that none of this would have been possible without the input of a very enthusiastic head and a group of brilliant teachers.
Y 1
Y 2
Y e a r 1
A selection of Irma’s etchings are currently available from the shop and gallery, 
