Karin Andrews Jashapara - artistic director

Training:  BA English at UCL, PGCE from The Institute of Education, London; Shadow theatre maker and performer, Gulbenkian Foundation Bursary 1993-4, FSL (Forest School Leader) Go Wild Education 2019, Storytelling developed with Surrey Storytellers

Fully insured, First Aid trained and DBS updated. 

Forest School Leader and maker/writer/performer

Forest School Leader - Birdhurst Nursery, South Croydon - October 2023 - present

Forest School Leader - The London Acorn School 2018 - present

Little Acorns parent - child group leader 2018 - 2023

Storyteller, with shadow / 2D imagery, 2012 - present

Puppeteer  - 1982 - 2018

COMMISSIONS

Scrappetto for London Borough of Sutton 1987

Croaky Flies Again (on acid rain) for LBS 1992

Shadows of Dreamtime (environmental attitudes learned from indigenous Arnhem Land aboriginal people) for LBS  1995

'Blue Like an Apple' (dragonflies' history and human causes of climate change) for DEFRA and the London Borough of Sutton, 2008 

'Death in a Nut' (Scottish folktale transcribed by Linda Williamson) for Kicking the Bucket Festival, 2014  

'Where Are You Now?' (the effect on family members of catastrophic brain damage) for CDOC Research Centre, Universities of Cardiff and York, 2015

Freelance apprenticeships and highlights :

English National Opera ; puppeteer for Blond Eckbert by Judith Weir

Mme Souhami & Co ; puppeteer and workshop leader

Horse + Bamboo ; costume and puppet designer and maker, workshop leader

Rhythm Tree Theatre - several  commissioned puppetry works for young people, exploring diverse environmental issues 1986 - 2008

Rhythm Tree Theatre designed and performed adaptation of  Margaret Mahy's The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate 1994

Adapted and Performed  (glove, rod and shadow puppets, piano accordion, clarinet) with Sarha Moore (Saxophone, oboe, percussion )

Peppercorn Puppets  touring nationally 1983 - 5

Tricorn Puppets; apprenticed to Kinny Gardner and Erika Cruttwell as glove and rod puppeteer 

Colleagues in Play of Light  : 

Elizabeth Andrews  - Freelance cellist and director of music projects, formerly CEO of The Scottish Ensemble

Will Embliss - musician, composer, instrument designer and maker

Zannie Fraser - director of 'Blue Like an Apple' 2007 also puppeteer and writer, director of Ripstop Theatre

Rachael Nicholson -  director of 'Death in a Nut' 2014, also art therapist, puppeteer and writer

Ben Musgrave - writer leading workshops for The Conference of the Birds and The Invisible Man

Awards, Commissions and Bursaries 

2016  Cultural Award    Legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Forum 2012 , awarded by the London Borough of Sutton

2016 Commissioned by the Arts Council -funded  Sutton Imagine Arts Festival to create a version of The Invisible Man, with students from two High Schools.

2015  University of York and Cardiff University - funded shadow theatre collaboration with Professor Jenny Kitzinger and Professor Celia Kitzinger, Co-Directors and Co-founders of the Coma and Chronic Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre

2014  Commissioned by the 2014 'Kicking the Bucket' Festival in Oxford to create a version with puppets of Death in a Nut

2013  Imagine Arts Festival - extracts from The Story of Lieutenant Cockatoo by Phyllis Tate and Ronald Eyre

2012  Big Dance funded project : Wandle Valley pupils making and dancing with masks in Sutton Ecology Centre

2012 The Conference of the Birds - major Arts Council commission working with Ben Musgrave and several local artists on shadow puppetry in the community.

2011- 2012     Arts Council funded  participatory arts project  : The Conference of the Birds by Farid Ud-Din Attar

2007  DfES  - Commission to write, make and perform Blue Like an Apple, exploring the issues underlying climate change