We need a little help from our friends.
In February 2015 our contract on our current premises, at Unit 18, on Bristol Harbourside comes to an end. However, we have the opportunity to secure a new agreement for Unit 18 with Bristol City Council. To do this we need your support.
We are in negotiations with Bristol City Council and now is the critical time to show them that Puppet Place is an important place for Bristol and puppetry. If we do secure our new agreement this will mean that we can:
• Make Bristol Festival of Puppetry 2015 bigger and better.
• Run puppetry workshops for all ages at Unit 18.
• Continue to provide workspace for our resident community of puppeteers and artists.
• Provide a full year round programme of events and activities for everyone.
If you like the sound of all this and would like to express your support for Puppet Place please leave a reply below, like or share this post or write a statement of support to rachel@puppetplace.org
Without a new agreement and a building to work from, we will struggle to continue the work that we already do and support the next generation of artists and puppeteers.
Thank you
Rachel McNally – Executive Producer
Puppet Place Blog 
Bristol is seen as a centre of animation and the arts. Help keep that reputation alive by allowing Puppet Place to continue the brilliant work they are doing!
I love your work guys! Whatever I can do to help please let me know. Have already been talking about hiw much we are looking forward to 2015 Puppet Fest!
Keep puppets and puppetery alive! Upfront Puppet Theatre and team support you and you’re continued work, I hope you get to keep your premises and we’d love to be in touch with you and do something for your 2015 puppet festival.
The companies based at the Puppet Place are an asset to Bristol and provide a hub for this work, giving opportunities and inspiration to young performers and companies. Bristol is well know for a great standard of puppetry and the festival is a fantastic addition to the calendar here. It showcases the companies based here (established and emerging) and brings talent from outside that is inspiring for puppeteers, audiences and performers from other disciplines. It would be a crime for this to fizzle out, it needs supporting.
The Bristol Puppet Place is a very important element in the increasingly fragile puppetry infrastructure in the UK. With the tragic loss of influence and effectiveness of Puppet Centre London, Puppet Place is vital in the development of and promotion of the art of the puppet in Britain and an important voice for puppetry in the performing arts across Britain.
The work you do is so vital! As puppetry gathers momentum and indeed respect (the UK has sometimes lagged behind Europe in recognising this important, inclusive and magical art form) you are very much a shiny jewel in Bristol’s cultural and considerably-creative crown. It’s sometimes hard to quantify the value (cultural or financial) of something, but your festival; for example, is a Beacon for Bristol and its City Council and can be seen throughout the UK (drawing-in visitors from far and wide). I look forward to following your excellent programme of work. Regards, Tim Jones (Banbury-based puppeteer working predominantly in London & Manchester)
Please don’t miss this opportunity to keep puppetry/art/animation at the center and heart of Bristol. It’s where it needs to be and where it deserves to be.
This space is a great resource for all theatre makers. I really hop that you can keep he space for the benefit of the theatre community of Bristol. All the best, Juan Herrera.
The Puppet Place has been a vital cultural organisation for Puppet Theatre and local communities in Bristol. As well it is a hub for for puppetry in the whole South West region. It’s range of activities is enormous ranging from providing training to working with local schools to partnering with other cultural organisations in the city to bringing international high quality theatre to Bristol. The bi-annual Puppet Festival is massively important to puppetry in Bristol. South West, the UK and beyond. Long live The Puppet Place!!
Puppet place has contributed heavily to the identity of bristol’s theatre making scene. It attracts the best puppetry practitioners from around the wrorld, culminating with the ever popular puppetry festival. Without it there would be a gaping hole in the development of brilliant as well as commercially viable performance.
This is an important part of Bristol’s identity. Having traveled the world this year I have realised what an inspiration and leading voice Bristol is for unusual arts like this. It would be a mistake to let them fall from focus.
I think Puppet Place is fantastic. As an art student at Bower Ashton, I met a technician who was involved at puppet place. He enabled me get to work experience assisting with model making for Rusty Squid who use the workshop space. Just being in the environment was a key to meeting many more people working in the model-making and puppetry industries in Bristol, it really opened lots of doors. I love the Puppetry Festival, its a unique event and there’s nothing else like it in Bristol, and it brings international performers to Bristol. I would be very sad if this hub ceased to exist. It also has a lot more potential to grow and encourage puppetry to be more prolific in the South West, as well a providing a good connection to London’s scene.
Have you spoken to your regional “Locality” representitive/ Council owned premises can now be registered as being for public use, making them harder for the council to sell off. http://locality.org.uk/ Locality offer grants to support community groups to secure premises. I would also suggest the Community Asset Transfer (CAT) option, as councils now have a national directive to support communities through the CAT model for community managment of public facilities. http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/community-and-safety/community-asset-transfer-policy and http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/children-and-young-people/community-asset-transfer-cat-bristol-youth-links – Just a though, good luck. x
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the reply. Yes we are going through the CAT process. To clarify, the Council are talking to us, we just want to make it really clear to them how valuable Puppet Place is to Bristol and the puppetry community and what the potential is. The response we have had so far has been brilliant, so thank you to everyone.
We’ll keep you posted.
Thanks
Rachel
The arts and creativity especially encouraging the growth and sustainability of puppetry are a very important and vital part of the community. Puppetry in particular brings people together and as well as entertainment is capable of delivering strong messages and communicating in all walks of life. Puppetry is used in entertainment, health care, trauma, councelling; and if we look at the amazement and awe that the fairly recent large ‘story tale’ puppets created across Bristol and Liverpool, people united and engaged through puppetry. Many important skills to be learned
Puppet Place is a vital part of the arts ecology of the city, as is the festival. To not support the companies and their work by housing them and more importantly funding aspects of the work would be both short sighted and hypocritical of a city council who trades on its arts reputation. All of the companies involved in PP have international reputations and profiles alongside the work they do in the city.
So Bristol City Council, Please ensure you not just continue your valuable support but that you extend it.
Regards
Phill
Puppet Place is a terrific example of what makes Bristol a great city to live in. They’re a small(ish), independent creative company – much as Aardman was back in the day. Great creative endeavours grow from just such an environment. They are of course our neighbours, sitting handily between Aardman and Spike Island in one of Bristol’s most valuable and exciting creative enclaves. We love the work they do, we think they’re perfectly placed, and we value their proximity. The artisan nature of their work is entirely appropriate here in this corner of Spike Island with its traditions of manual work and craft and I would be very, very sorry if they had to leave their natural home!
Great space, great people, great for the community young and old, great location for something other than old boats (although these are cool too)
Definately kicks ass compaired to the MINGING flats that are destroying one of the most attractive parts of Bristol. Really hope you. Continue the good work and get recognition from the council as the asset that you are to them. Good luck! Pip.
The work that Puppet Place does is such an integral part of the creative scene here in Bristol that it would be criminal for it to have to be up-ended to another premises. I hope that BCC will continue to support this vital arts organization.
Far too many fantastic arts projects have disappeared in recent years. Please let this company continue to thrive and thrill!
Dear Puppet Place,
Your contribution to the wonderful art of puppetry as a means of friendship with the people must continue. The search for a permanent home is a noble one and your contribution to date has been outstanding. The Scottish Mask & puppet Centre salutes you and wishes you all the best for 2015.
Dr. Malcolm Knight.
Dear Malcolm.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
Have a wonderful Christmas and hope to see you in 2015.
Best Wishes
Rachel
What a glorious, creative and important place this is for Bristol. Having spaces like this in our city for makers and creators is exactly what Bristol is about- exciting, surprising and astonishing.
Dear Bristol Council – I am the AD of Black Hole Theatre, Inc a puppetry based visual theatre company in Melbourne Australia. I have made 2 trips now to Bristol just to see the work that Puppet Place is delivering and supporting. It’s inspirational. I meet Rachel regularly at festivals across Europe and so admire her vision, passion, and the work she produces! You might not understand the kind of impact they are having on the international scene – as well as in the UK. If I were you I would give this group all the support I could! Apart from the rest of the world, Puppetplace is wonderful for Bristol!
Dear Nancy,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I always find our meetings inspirational. The puppetry community is an amazingly supportive and positive group of people.
Hope to see you soon.
Rachel
I hope you get to renew your contract
Dear Bristol Council. with so much current interest in Puppetry Arts and a firm consensus developed that Puppetry has a future in education and the arts, evidenced by the arts council’s current initiative to find ways to strengthen Puppetry, now is the perfect time to support Puppet Place and to put in place a long term plan to develop it as one of the foundation stones of a UK National Puppetry Arts structure. No doubt this will also contribute to the development of Bristol and the south west’s Education and Arts business sectors as well as its reputation as a creative City.
Marcus Clarke FRSA
Handsuppuppets
As a Bristol resident, I am really proud to live in a city where artistic culture is strongly valued, and puppetry forms a huge part of this. Puppetry when done correctly can provide some of the best and most affecting theatre around, I draw this conclusion from puppetry shows I have seen in Bristol. Puppet Place I think is a big reason that puppetry has been a part of Bristol over recent years, and for it to be threatened would be a huge disappointment. I know that me and many others in Bristol will hope to be seeing good puppetry in Bristol for many years to come, supporting Puppet Place is essential for this to happen. Best of luck!
Puppet Place is a fantastic and important resource for all theatre makers not just those engaged in puppetry. Please please save this space for the benefit of the theatre community of Bristol and beyond. Spaces like these are the lifeblood of creative communities.
I really hope you get to keep your space.I am a student dramathetapist hoping to use Puppetry in my practice.You ate such a vital resource to students and emerging puppeteers alike.All the best.Karen
Bristol puppet place enabled me and others to undertake extremely valuable work experience when I was studying at the royal welsh college of music and drama. This has now helped me in my professional career and the thought of this amazing opportunity and company being taken away is truely saddening! Puppetry is such a creative and magical art form and Bristol is lucky to have the talented individuals at puppet place putting puppetry in Bristol on the map!
Bristol, and particularly Puppet Place, is the epicentre of modern British puppetry and is much admired and enjoyed by artists and audiences from across the country and beyond. Puppet Place provides an invaluable support network which is instrumental to this wonderful industry, and those who both work in it and benefit from it. There’s nowhere else quite like it in the UK. Specialist knowledge is housed and nurtured in this place, and boundless creativity, opportunities and skills are given a real breeding ground. Please keep supporting, funding and encouraging this wonderful organism so that we can continue to enjoy the work, events, programs and creativity that it produces. Without the opportunities that they provide, artists like myself have diminished access to training, work and industry platforms. I’m very grateful to Puppet Place for opening my very first door into puppetry and being there at the start of my journey as a puppeteer. Long may they continue!
One of the main reasons I am drawn to Bristol is because of it’s puppetry scene, and Puppet Place is a central hub – most of my information about puppetry in Bristol has come to me via Puppet Place, and I’d like to continue getting opportunities from them in the future! Best wishes.
The work that comes out of Puppet Place is world class and simply couldn’t exist in Bristol without the kind of scale and capacity afforded by the building they currently occupy. It is one of the best kept secrets of Bristol’s creative scene and one we can all work harder to support and promote, but something we underestimate at our peril. It is an important meeting place and provides invaluable making space for a wide community of talented and interconnected practitioners.
This is a wonderful space with great creativity that has inspired me greatly. I do hope that it is able to stay around to allow more people to experience it and for the puppetry to continue evolving. Good luck!