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Selected notes from the World Café
Led by Colin Funk and Brian Woodward from the Banff Centre Leadership Lab, the following questions were posed to participants after a panel discussion between Colin Jackson of the Epcor Performing Arts Centre, Clem Martini, a playwright and professor at the University of Calgary and Judd Palmer founder of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop.
1) How have you been changed by puppets?
- Energy! Anything can become a puppet and becomes part of the story
- Puppets provide a shock absorber (buffer) between puppeteer and audience
- Spirit speaks = puppet, shift in body, channeling
- Something from nothing is always liberating
- Puppets have helped me to be more self- less
- I love puppets!
- Been inspired to change my life
2) Behind all Social Change is learning … How do puppets help with learning?
- Shake us up , encourage to be intuitive
- Rehearse experiences
- Overcoming fears – Trust building
- Multi Sensory – don’t depend on language (verbal)
- Shifts perspective so to see greater possibilities for problem solving, courage to express views through a different medium
- Projection – child’s spirit can be represented.
- 3rd party unbiased breaks out of our conscious living that is often on autopilot - creating a puppet you create a fanciful that resets the biases
- Brings us back to ritual – spirit –> newness /revitalization
- Puppets are a safety zone
- Laughter is very good medicine!
- Childhood TV shows – memories that “stuck” - puppet character – magic – compassion created by animal puppets
- Use different visual cues
- More universal than the individual
- Puppets don’t come with baggage which makes us more open and accepting
3) What is the biggest challenge to using puppets for social change?
- Using puppets could deflect the real point
- Puppets become an end to themselves
- Activist vs. Entertainer
- Commodification
- Comes easier if its in your past especially in places with no malls, TVs
- Hopelessness about social change, apathetic about it, don’t believe change is possible.
- Fear of creative process – doubts
- Creative and political controversy
- Artists may not be well educated in the issue
- Adults don’t think they have much to learn from puppets
- Oversimplification – cultural sensitivity not understanding
- Having the puppets – can’t compete with modern technology
- Problems keep coming back
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