In Caroline Astell-Burt’s hands, a limp collection of wooden parts becomes an animated figure, expressing in turns dejection, curiosity and shyness. It walks across the floor, sits on her foot, rubs its face against her calf.

A puppeteer for more than 20 years, Ms Astell-Burt uses a wide array of puppets, including marionettes, sock, glove, shadow and rod, to reach disabled and disaffected children. “You’re enabling children to become more themselves,” she says. “Puppetry is a vehicle for passion and individuality, and a way of letting children show their strengths.”

Ms Astell-Burt has worked in schools around England. This summer term she worked with colleagues in the London borough of Southwark’s Oliver Goldsmith primary, the school attended by murdered 10-year-old Damilola Taylor, on a dance and puppetry production. “Some children need intensive therapy,” she says. “They’ve seen terrible things.” Puppets, she says, may be a means of reaching them.

Puppets, as she demonstrates, can be found everywhere. She begins her presentation in primary schools by pulling forward a wooden chair. “Did you know your classroom is magic?” she whispers, before sticking on screwed up balls of paper to make eyes and a nose, and introducing “Cherry the Chair”.

“Is it finished?” she asks infant classes. “No,” they insist. “Not until it has a mouth.” So she puts on a down-turned mouth. “Is it finished?” “No - because it’s not smiling.” She goes on to animate Doris Door, Daniel Drawer and Charlie Chair before getting the children to discover more characters in the classroom and talking them through an overnight classroom adventure, which ends only when the cleaners arrive in the morning. “I’m not entertaining them,” she says. “I’m co-ordinating them. They’ve made something that can only be in their imagination.”

All teachers can be puppeteers, insists Ms Astell-Burt. “The basis of puppetry is using objects for a purpose. It’s the animation of an object to make it a comforter. Puppets go wonderfully with language and literacy.”

But puppets should be selected with care. Not all children will be confident about putting their hands into a dragon’s bottom. Some are frightened of “animals”. She worked with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra to produce a sock puppet singalong. Ease of manipulation makes these suitable for work with the very young and children with profound and multiple learning difficulties. “You find ways of letting children do a little for a big result.”

Ms Astell-Burt trained as a stage manager in opera before going on to study with London’s Little Angel Marionette Theatre in 1980. With her husband, Ronnie LeDrew, the puppeteer behind Zippy from the children’s series Rainbow, which ran on independent television from 1972-96 - she founded the London School of Puppetry. Its courses are accredited by the University of Middlesex and 11 students were recently awarded the professional puppeteer’s diploma.

The closure this spring, following local authority funding cuts, of the Little Angel seemed to typify the poor state of puppetry as a performing art. But after a summer spent raising funds, the theatre, which has been popular for the past 40 years, has been revived, and will hold its first public performance at its Islington venue, a production of Jonah and the Whale, tomorrow. Two other productions, Romeo and Juliet and The Frog Prince are touring schools.

Caroline Astell-Burt is delighted. She says: “Without the Little Angel we had no focal point for puppetry performance in London. I am excited and full of anticipation for the future of the Little Angel and so grateful to those who gave money to save it.”

Ms Astell-Burt says puppets have great educational and therapeutic value, an idea she explores in her recently re-issued book I am the Story - the art of puppetry in education and therapy. “Puppets offer the most wonderful sense of protection, the opportunity to perform without being seen. You’re not saying, ‘Look at me.’ You’re saying, ‘Look at the puppet.’” I am the Story: the art of puppetry in education and therapy, by Caroline Astell-Burt, is published by Souvenir Press (Eamp;A), pound;12.99. l Next week Friday magazine previews the Little Angel Marionette Theatre’s new season. Tel: 020 7359 8581