Puppet Show Incorporated’s mission is to preserve and promote puppetry arts as an expressive art form. Their chief aim is on inspiring imagination, education and community through the global art of puppetry. Founded in 2017, Puppet Show Inc. is based in Chapel Hill and proudly serves Orange, Wake, Chatham, Durham, Forsyth and Alamance counties. Read on about the positive impact of this Center Member!
What has your organization learned through partnering and collaboration to achieve your mission?
Puppet Show Incorporated is a mobile puppet theater. As we do not have a brick and mortar store front, we rely on strong partnerships to host the puppetry programs. In the almost three years we have been in operation, strong partnerships have been formed with community organizations with similar missions such as the Carrboro Library, Hillsborough Library, GiGi's Playhouse, Center for Developmentally Delayed Children, and Kidzu Children's Museum. In collaboration with community partnering organizations, we reach out to populations who may not have the opportunity to experience a live theatrical performance by offering puppetry at no charge. We have learned that establishing and maintaining partnerships and collaborating with the partners is vital to our organization's mission of making puppetry arts accessible to all.
What strides has your organization made towards achieving a more equitable society? What have been your lessons learned?
The puppetry arts programs we offer showcase fairy tales and folk tales from a wide diversity of cultures. Almost all of the folklores were passed along orally through generations of storytelling. Puppet Show Inc. is dedicated to keeping these ancient traditions and customs alive through the visual art form of puppetry. Our aim is to emphasize the contributions of many countries to puppetry and to ensure all cultures are represented equally in the programs. We have learned that families will attend puppetry arts programs that offer the traditional forms of puppetry and traditional oral storytelling. The classics continue to draw a diverse audience.
What programs, events, initiatives, or services showcase your organization's commitment to excellence?
Our commitment to excellence is demonstrated through our continual request for feedback from families and our community partners about the puppetry programs we offer. We routinely hand out surveys and analyze the survey results so we can improve. In order to continue the free community puppetry programs, grants are written annually so that this initiative, which is so essential to our mission, can continue.
How has your organization innovated or adapted to meet growing or changing demands placed on your organization?
Puppet Show Incorporated has had to adapt to meet the growing needs of our families. The free community puppetry programs have steadily drawn large crowds. This has resulted in utilizing high school volunteers and college volunteers to assist with the community programs. Puppet Show Inc has been approved by Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools and UNC Service Learning as an approved volunteer agency. The high school and college volunteers have played an important role in helping puppetry arts come to life.