With over 25 years professional
experience in health and social
care, Karrie creates workshops
and programmes for staff and
service users of care settings. Puppets and masks offer effective ways to explore issues with humour and sensitivity. Participants can share ideas, create their own puppets, and develop stories to performance (for each other or to a wider audience).
Puppets have universal appeal. They can engage people in imaginary worlds, inspiring further creative process. People naturally identify with puppet characters who can express feelings from the safety of being one-step removed from individual reality. Serious issues can be explored with humour, with or without words. Their visual and physical features provide opportunities for effective communication as well as entertainment. The world of puppetry can be an enjoyable meeting space between people who may have difficulty in interacting or communicating.
Previous participants include adults with mental health needs; adults with learning disabilities, teachers, care staff, child-minders and the general public. As well as having fun, people have used the puppets to express feelings of depression, discrimination, isolation, achievements, love and hope. We have also run workshops on ‘healing stories’.Some organisations we have worked with:
Health & Happiness, Highland Health Board, Artsplay Highland for ‘Inside -Outside’ a series of workshops using puppetry and masks to increase emotional well-being and self-esteem.
Birchwood Highland
‘Masks and Metaphor’ workshops for creative fun and well-being
‘Can You See Me?’ A ‘See Me’ funded project for Birchwood Highland to combine puppetry skills, personal stories and creative expression to produce a puppet show about experiences of mental ill-health and recovery. The puppet making workshops will draw on personal strengths and experiences, to produce various characters. The projects and puppet shows will be filmed. This will be screened for community venues in October 2010 and will also available as a training resource from Birchwood Highland.
Long-Stay Hospital Story Project: Karrie developed and curated a ‘story exhibition’ about life in long-stay Highland Hospitals (1864-2009). This was commissioned by Sense Scotland (Glasgow). The exhibition, about people’s experiences, ran for two weeks at the Centre for Health Science, Raigmore, Inverness in Nov/Dec2009. Karrie did a lot of the sensitive story work on a voluntary basis, which is yet to be collated. Grateful thanks continue to be given to all those involved in the project. There will be more developments, and it is hoped the exhibition will return to the Highlands when a suitable venue can be found. See this review:
Puppetry and Dementia Project
Zenwing has been developing a puppetry programme for people with experiences of Dementia. Initial steps were funded by Puppet Animation Scotland, with grateful guidance and support from Hearts & Minds practitioners.
Further details Puppetry & Dementia.
Also Images of some of the work
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