European Puppet Ministry Festival 2011

I can't quite believe I went to my first puppet festival 15 years ago - and have been to one every year of my life ever since!

This year One Way UK's EPMF was held in Derby and Reading and I was fortunate enough to be invited to teach at both festivals. I was running workshops on a variety of subjects including puppetry for YouTube and a range of basic and advanced puppetry techniques.

I love visiting or working at puppet festivals as there is always so much creativity around the place which always help to accelerate my own creative process for my own projects. These festival was no different, but they were tiring too! It's tough teaching classes all day, I think across the two events 500 puppeteers attended, which is cool. After the second festival a bunch of us went out for a post-festival feast and hilarity ensued!

Happy New Year from Hellyer's Puppet Workshop

So we've successfully reached the end of 2010... a year packed full of great memories!

This year in the summer I was fortunate enough to visit the United States again to teach puppetry at I-Fest (you can buy DVDs of the workshops I taught from OneWayStreet.com). Despite the festival being fantastic as usual (and being looked after so well by the One Way Street team - Thanks to Todd and Susan!) the highlight of the trip this year had to be the visit to see the Blue Man Group in Chicago! Dave and June Privett from Playsoup took us along and we had a fantastic time!

Also in the summer I was able to visit my friend Phil Fletcher again who is a fantastic puppeteer and puppet builder. We've known each other since the good old days when MySpace ruled the earth and Facebook hadn't even been invented :) Phil is now working at the BBC in London and he (and Warrick - also a puppeteer at the BBC) were kind enough to show us round TV Centre and their studio.

Later on in the year I also taught at the One Way UK annual puppet festival in Reading, I have been teaching at that particular festival for the last 13 or so years so it was great to be asked back again (must be doing something right). 

And all this activity has been squeezed in between puppet builds and some fairly major planning sessions for the future of Hellyer's Puppet Workshop (the fruits of which will be seen in 2011).  I'll leave you with two videos... the first is Pierre's big end of year 2010 quiz:

The second is a wrap up from me and a possible New Year resolution.

All the best for 2011!
Take care - Dave