(Photo credit: Festive Road, who I think made the puppets – please let me know if I’m wrong)
Another puppetry project that will culminate in the London Olympics celebrations later this year is Imagination Our Nation (ION). It’s a five year national participatory art project undertaken by Kinetika, an international outdoor performance company, under the artistic direction of the company’s founder, Ali Pretty.
The project is based on an idea of Derek Walcott’s: ‘The only nation I have now is my imagination’.
I wanted to create a project that engaged with the youth of today who are citizens of the future, using the performing arts as a tool to facilitate conversations about inclusivity and diversity within communities…. which aims to leave a legacy of youth based participatory art in communities through out the UK. – Ali Pretty
It is geographically spread across Great Britain and divided into 5 ‘hubs’ specialising in Community, Environment, Diversity, Creativity and Activity. And the backstory that has taken place over the last 5 years – GermiNation, FasciNation, DetermiNation, IllumiNation and ImagiNation – is another version of the familiar: puppets as representatives of another world come here to get to know us and help us re-imagine the future to save the planet.
I like the puppets. There are at least 10 small Champion brothers and sisters, who are 3 feet high – a nice kid height, made from aluminium, and have small decorations to differentiate between them. They are operated by long rods, requiring 4 puppeteers. Here are a few glimpses of the making, and some nice footage of how they move.
There are also 5 larger Eternal puppets, including Atom, Magma and DNA (I couldn’t find the other names), big brothers to the smaller ones, that stand 3 metres tall, and need 5 puppeteers. They have a cool design lines, and are again made of aluminium. The operation of the ION puppets remind me very much of the puppet belonging to Stabfugurencompany that often performs in Berlin.
The puppets can be lit up so they take on different colours, as seen here in From DetermiNation to IllumiNation. It will be interesting to see how they all come together later in the year.
