Laura Kirby has always had a strong aptitude and curiosity for arts and crafts. Her earliest memory is a quilled card she made at the age of eight, and she has kept learning new techniques ever since — most recently mindful embroidery and iris folding. Her work has been shown in local exhibitions, including at The EDGE Café in Cambridge, and she enjoys crafts stalls throughout the year, always aiming to make things unusual and quirky.

Laura found her way into teaching by accident. She trained and worked in archives management, and it was a course in teaching and training adults, taken just for fun in 2018, that changed her path. She began volunteering as a crafts teacher for a mental health charity and a church, building her skills as she went.

Between 2022 and 2024, Laura and a friend received funding from a local charity to co-teach card making and other crafts for wellbeing, running community sessions called Fantastic Cards in Cambridge, inspired by mentoring from Cambridge Community Arts. In September 2024 she started Happy Crafters, a series of community crafts groups in a local café in Histon.

Laura's workshops draw on skills she has taught herself in card-making, sewing and embroidery, with a focus on wellbeing, fun, creativity and practicality. All workshops are suitable for beginners and all materials are provided.

You can find Laura on Instagram and Facebook at @laurakirbycrafts.