We hope you're all having a lovely half term! We're already looking ahead to projects starting in September 2019 - if you know a school that would like a unique large-scale creative project that boosts children's confidence, resilience and motivation (among many other things), then get in touch! You can email admin@yppt.org.uk for more information, especially if your school is interested but would need help with the funding - we may be able to work with them to raise the funds, but please ask them to contact us as soon as possible! We can work with ages 9 and up and are happy to hear from all sort of schools - primary, secondary, sixth form, all sorts! Do help us spread the word and get as many children and young people involved in these transformational projects as we can!

We are very excited to announce that we have now started our first ever inter-generational projects - two projects run as collaborations between Year Six children at Alban City School in St Albans, and a group of older people from the local community! The children read through the two shows before Christmas, and designed puppets which are now being made by the older people at weekly sessions held at St Albans Abbey. We are very grateful for the support of this project by multiple organisations, including St Albans Abbey, the Hertfordshire Community Foundation, London Luton Airport and the Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation. The shows are both based around stories about St Albans and the Abbey, and will be performed in the Abbey in June - more details to follow soon!

Our Year Six classes are painting their designs onto their canvases - lots of discussion within the teams as the children work together to bring their designs to life!

Last week our children used rulers, tape measures and times tables to scale up their set designs onto the large canvases. Lots of great teamwork on display as well as some impressive maths!

We've been really impressed with the teamwork in our schools this week as the children worked together to design the sets for their shows!

Happy New Year from the YPPT! We've been busy over the Christmas holidays putting together props kits and backdrop canvases for our projects starting work on their set designs this term, and also preparing for three new exciting projects starting this month - watch this space for more details!

Congratulations to all the children who have worked hard on stringing their puppets this term - between them, they've tied 12,000 knots! We hope you all have a lovely Christmas holiday.

By the end of the 2017-18 academic year, the YPPT had worked with around 900 children and young people. With this year's crop of puppets being strung at the moment, we are delighted to announce that the thousandth YPPT puppet has now been made! Here is the 1000th puppet and his creator, who is working towards his class' production of Macbeth at Bewick Bridge Primary School in Cambridge.

We've been so busy in all our schools that we keep forgetting to take photos for updates! All of our projects are now well into costume designing and making, with many children sewing from patterns for the first time in their lives. They've had to work hard but have worked together through the difficult bits and the costumes are looking great - we can't wait for the puppets to come together at the end of term!

As our Cambridge schools' half-term comes to an end, and our Hertfordshire schools look forward to a week off, here's a quick look back at what we've been up to over the past few months!