Helen is a poet straying into Science Territory, a Science teacher gone to The Other Side, an educator, facilitator and creative agitator. She offers one-off experiences and projects which combine STEM subjects with Creative Writing and other Arts based approaches to encourage imaginative, creative and inventive thinking and to consider the social and ethical implications of STEM subjects.

“Wow! I’ve been trying some of the things we did at the workshop – and it’s been fab! We made machines with a potentially difficult Year 9 class I have never taught until today and the machines were amazing. Better than ours even!” Teacher feedback

Helen’s works have included a residency at the Museum of Science and Industry in  Manchester, Passing Down, a collaboration with academics, the community and an artist to create a piece of word based textile art responding to people’s ideas about inheritance, and work on the Leonardo Project – a NESTA funded project to explore teaching and art synchronously.

Working with Helen, children have sent Maths poetry up in Helium balloons, created robots with poetic hearts, and racetrack board games to explore forces and friction. Teachers have created quasi-perpetual motion machines and life support systems for Numbskulls. Helen’s next project is to work with scientists, chefs and young people to consider the future of production and distribution and to create stories and dishes made out of ingredients that don’t yet exist.

Helen works with teachers to reconnect them to their creativity, to consider their own learning and to devise new learning approaches and materials. She offers CPD sessions to develop Creative STEM teaching and also to introduce techniques for teaching science and poetry together. She also writes learning materials for poetry and STEM.

Helen offers bespoke services for single sessions or for longer projects. Learning experiences will be designed based on curricular requirements and the learning styles and interests of the children – and the teacher! If necessary she can even arrange for other artistic or STEM practitioners to work alongside her.

She also offers the following off-the-peg workshops:

Poetry Bugs – Using a series of Helen’s own poems about insects and a collection of toys and puppets, this workshops teaches children about ecosystems, life cycles, adaptations as well as poetry forms and also frequently result in the children contemplating issues within their own lives.

Textperiment – These workshops which can fit in with any experiment, use similes and metaphors to explore the imagery and the concepts behind experiments and to communicate about them in novel ways.

Poetry Revision – These sessions (which are also available as teacher CPD sessions) look at the different ways poetry can be used to help pupils remember key facts and concepts.

Key information

• Key stages 1-5
• CRB Checked
• Inset Training Specialist
• Single classes or whole school projects
• Bespoke service
• Cross curricular support
• Personal learning and training skills