A sea of excited faces greeted me at St. Michael’s Primary School, Kingsteignton, South Devon, in February, for our shadow puppetry workshop exploring the qualities of light and shadow. The year 3 children investigated the interaction of light with colours and textures, along with how to design and perform silhouette art.

I was amazed at how empathic the 7-8 year olds were, able to communicate and recognise emotions solely by the movements of each others’ simple, non-articulated puppets!

It was a pleasure to share the magic of shadow play with such an attentive group, who all created and performed their own shadow puppets by the end of the day.