2024

At the start of this year we were pleased to return to London with some of Kinetika‘s puppets for Light Up Kilburn – a community event including a parade through the streets of Kilburn with volunteers trying their hand at puppetry. Some of our first outdoor puppetry performances were in Kilburn (a million years ago), so it was special to be back.

In Spring we were fortunate to receive Arts Council Funding for a period of Organisational Development, which meant we could dedicate time, resources and energy into strengthening our company, this included some practical professional development, like mental health first aid training and a lot of careful thinking and planning to improve our access provisions, our work with young people, and our environmental sustainability.

The Summer was a busy one, as per usual, with plenty of outdoor performances of Buzz and Arbor across the country, we even snuck in puppeteering on an advert for Ikea in London, Alice’s Day in Oxford, and speaking at the annual National Rural Touring Forum conference in Blackpool. In August we opened a new outdoor show, We Are More Alike, a location specific show about Folkestone, mapping the past, present and future of communities seeking change. We were really pleased to return to the Little Angel Theatre to deliver another Spectrum Youth Theatre Summer school in August, where we spent a week making a short film about the Alternative Olympics.

In September, our multi-award winning show Kinder went back on the road, touring to Sheffield, Margate, Bath, London and Nottingham to a whole range of audiences, and ending with schools performances with Nonsuch Theatre. Performing this show is always incredibly moving, and being able to take it into community venues and school halls, so that everyone can access the work, was a great experience.