About Us

Puppet Place is your one-stop shop in the South West for all things puppet and animated on stage and film. We support a range of artists and companies who use puppetry in their work. Our base on Spike Island in Bristol is a vibrant, creative community hosting a number of puppetry companies and other groups and individuals working in the creative industries.

Puppet Place offers workshops and training to professionals and the general public, for all skills levels and all ages. We are currently developing a new programme for 2012: including all areas of puppetry from fabrication through to performance. We run "Puppet Surgeries": a series of evening sessions for puppeteers and artists who have specific issues they wish to address on a puppet build. This can be anything from a wobbly knee joint to how to create a special effect. We are expanding the series to include other areas such as "How To Be A Freelancer" and "Promoting Your Work". We signpost other workshops, training, materials and suppliers, and performances on this website and through Facebook and Twitter.

A cornerstone of our work is Bristol Festival of Puppetry – a biennial festival (next one in 2013) based at the Tobacco Factory. For 10 days at the end of the summer we welcome artists from all over the world, run workshops in everything from stop-frame animation to object theatre and process giant puppets through the street in our Community Carnival. We are dedicated to bringing the best of puppetry from around the world to Bristol and showcasing the wealth of talent in the South West.

In short, Puppet Place is run by puppeteers for puppeteers and anyone else. We operate an open doors policy, but we recommend that you ring or email first if you want to visit – that way we'll make sure the kettle is on!