Puppet Making for Use in Healing Self-Concept

Training from the The Sunflower Network

This is a day all about puppets, puppet making and an exploration of different ways puppets can be used when working with children & young people. Facilitated by artist, puppeteer and award-winning director Raven Kaliana, this will be a day rich in creativity, exploration and learning. 

The morning will be spent learning how to build simple hand puppets (one will be provided for you to take away at the end of the day) as well as explore different ways of using them therapeutically. 

In the afternoon we will show a screening of the puppet-based documentary ‘Stories of Healing’ which offers additional inspiration for using puppets in therapy and features an interview with Raven. The film will follow with a Q&A with Raven to discuss anything that may have come up from the day as well as her own powerful personal experience of using puppets to heal self-concept.

Further details about the day: 

Raven Kaliana will teach the fun & enjoyable process of building simple hand puppets, which can serve as a blank canvas to be individualised and brought to life by clients as a tool to work with personal and social identity. 

Puppets (though particularly useful in working with children) can also inspire new openness and curiosity in all age groups, including teens and the elderly. Participants will be invited to create their own characters to experience the feelings of validation and empowerment inherent in creating and projecting a personality onto a puppet. Therapeutic approaches for working with these characters and taking a 'spect-actor' role will be explored through exercises and group sharing. 

A moving and beautiful puppet-based documentary, Stories of Healing, will be screened to provide further ideas for using puppets with a range of different issues and scenarios. This will follow with an inspiring discussion on how those approaches might be implemented in therapeutic situations, and Raven can speak from her own experience about how she's used puppetry to change her relationship with her own past trauma.

Workshop Leader:

Raven Kaliana, an artist/activist with over 20 years experience in puppetry - is also a survivor of human trafficking, and directs Puppet (R)Evolution theatre company. She's presented Hooray for Hollywood, her award-winning autobiographical puppet film on human trafficking at London City Hall, UN Geneva, and Commission on the Status of Women. She's performed her play Love vs Trauma in Beijing; Puerto Rico; London Little Angel Theatre; Broken Puppet Symposium in Birmingham; and at Brighton Fringe Festival. She also directed Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress, a shadow animation, was interviewed in Stories of Healing, a documentary on using creativity to heal, and her work was the subject of the BBC Wellness Project pilot. She's developed many workshops on puppet-making, creating shadow animations, and on using puppetry in therapeutic and awareness-raising applications. Her work has been chronicled in New York Times; Guardian; BBC Woman's Hour; Puppetry International, and the Puppetry Journal. ravenkaliana.com

Ticket Price: £75

For more information and booking head to HERE