Hundreds of poppies have been created by staff and students at Saint John Houghton Catholic Voluntary Academy as part of a stunning Remembrance Day display.
The whole school has been involved in making the poppies from plastic bottles and they are now taking pride of place outside the school entrance.
Around 700 poppies have been made over the past five weeks and the display also features the silhouettes of two soldiers.
The idea for the memorial came from Matt Price, Head of Design Technology at the Kirk Hallam school.
He said: “I’d seen something similar which gave me the idea for the display and I think the initial inspiration was the poppy display in London a few years ago.
“We also wanted to do something special, a bit like when we created a human St George’s Cross flag to support England in the World Cup.
“When we started out we didn’t really set any targets in terms of how many poppies we wanted to make. We thought if we made 100 then that would be fine but we’ve ended up with about 700 now.
“We’ve had lot of plastic bottles donated and we’ve used a lot from the canteen which is great as that’s helped with recycling.
“Students and staff have really got behind the project, making poppies after school, in craft club and in Art and Design lessons.
“As well as the poppies we also put crosses in with the names of the soldiers who are from the local parish and who died and staff and students have been remembering them and talking about them.
“We’ve had great feedback from visitors to the school who have seen the display and after Sunday we’ll be taking it down but keeping the poppies. We’d like to use them to do something even bigger next year.”
Joan McCarthy, head teacher at Saint John Houghton CVA, said it was fantastic to see the whole school involved in the project.
She said: “This has been a great way to get our students involved in the Remembrance Day events and they were really keen to be part of the project, as were our staff. We are very proud of the display and we would like to thank everyone who contributed.”

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