Life Outside the Box puppets on Nationwide

As a result of our appearance on RTE's The People's Angelus the Life Outside the Box project was featured on Nationwide.

It shows project faciliator Corina Duyn at her home and studio in Lismore, and interviews project participant Ann O'Grady, and shows a short clip of our film.

Thank you RTE for your support of our project.

Talks on Puppetry and Disability at Nottingham Puppet Festival

Corina Duyn, the facilitator of the Life Outside the Box Puppet project is embarking on a speaking and research tour of the UK.
Starting with talks at the Nothingham Puppet Festival.
(details of other talks will be posted later)

Puppetry, Disability and Health

Speakers Include: Corina Duyn, Karrie Marshall

Fri 23 March, 2pm - 5pm

Bonington Building Lecture Theatre, Nottingham Trent University

book your FREE ticket

Puppetry has always been a part of cultural wellbeing. Its rich use of the fine and dramatic arts has created fantastic possibilities for professionals working in disability arts and healthcare. The craft of puppetry is particularly effective in facilitating communication and increased participation in fields such as autism, dementia care and mental health.

Writing for Puppetry

Speakers include: Melvyn Miller, Corina Duyn

Sat 24 March, 3.30pm - 6pm

Newton Building Lecture Theatre 4, Nottingham Trent University

book your FREE ticket 

Playwriting and dramaturgy function very differently for puppets and actors. There have been some high-profile performances such as War Horseadapted to stage using puppetry, but what are the challenges of using puppetry for a playwright and dramaturg? We’ve invited experts to open and discuss this very exciting debate about how to create great writing for puppetry.

Access: 

• Free
• Hearing loop installed
• Sign Language Interpreted
• Wheelchair access

(If you're attending the 'Writing for Pupppetry' event , please contact the organisors if you require  sign language, as it is not n place automatically)

Click HERE to read of Corina's crowd-funding event to help her with accommodation, and PA support 

Recent puppet related blog posts by Corina

• puppetry and disability, the contradictions of life with M.E.
• stepping out of boxes...

• Wheelchair AccessWheelchair Access

'Life Outside the Box' in Puppet Place newsletter.

Puppet Place in Bristol recently did an interview with Corina Duyn, facilitator of the project. 

It looks at her creative background, life with illness/disability and how all this lead to the

Life Outside the Box project and furhter puppet making adventures.

Abstract from the article related to Life Outside the Box

You can read the full story: Puppets and ME: An interview with Corina Duyn HERE 

...

"You have been very prolific as an artist in many mediums, painting & drawing, sculpture, writing and poetry, doll making and even weaving. How important are puppets to your work at the moment?

Very much so. Following on from the 6 months of work I did on the ‘Life Outside The Box’ project with the Irish Wheelchair Association, I was invited to speak at the ‘Broken Puppet’ Symposium on Puppets, Disability and Health at UCC in Cork. Our video has now been shown on Irish national TV and at the Disability Film Festival ‘Picture This’ in Canada.   Attending the symposium was like stepping into a completely new world and yet when I entered it, and moved about with open eyes and ears, I realised I had been part of this amazing, creative, fun, healing, and astonishing place for pretty much all my life.

The engagement of people with disabilities with puppets, not only as a form of therapy, but as creators and artists in their own right is something that can be transformative. Listening to the stories and speakers at the event has only served to reinforce to me what a powerful, evocative and meaningful role puppets have played in peoples lives throughout the years and will continue to do so long into the future.

I have now returned to teaching puppet making, in small groups and by social media/email. Only for one and a half hours a week at the moment but what great fun it is. I am improving my ability to set my own limits to what I can do and enjoying finding ways to enable my students to work on their own puppets in my studio, or in their own homes. The healing effect of teaching puppet making is not something that might bring about a miraculous recovery from my illness, although one would be very welcome however it came about, but it is bringing a new energy into my life and who can say where that will lead.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us Corina. Is it puppets, puppets, puppets all the way now?

Absolutely. My return to teaching puppet making and the experience of the symposium and discussions around disability and health has created an energy and enthusiasm that will take me onto the next stage of my journey."

"Reflections" Puppets- project in progress.

Further reading about Corina Duyn's current "Reflections" puppet project:

• Puppetry, as a reflecting on life with illness/disability
• The healing effects of teaching puppet making
• Collaboration with Dominic Fee
• To contact Corina about taking a puppet making class, please click HERE
• More about Life Outside the Box, please take a look through this blog.

Thank you for visiting, and please do let us know what your thoughts, and any questions.

Puppets in the life of arts facilitator Corina Duyn

This post was first published on Corina Duyn's Blog, on the 13th August 2017, and shares the personal story of puppets in the life of the 'Life Outside the Box' facilitator Corina Duyn.

.....

Attending the Puppet Symposium  last week was like stepping into a completely new world. And yet when I entered it, and moved about with open eyes and ears, I realised I had been part of this amazing, creative, fun, healing, and astonishing place for pretty much all my life. 

I just did not know it...

Persephone Sextou and puppet Johnny Dwyer having a private moment.
 (I am allowed to witness this...)

Johnny's Ancestors

While writing my paper/ my presentation for the Symposium, I looked back at the dolls and puppets I created in my life. I made dolls clothes on an Singer hand sewing machine around the ages of 7, or 8. Made my first doll at the age of ten. Borrowed doll making books throughout my teens from the library, and bought my first book at the age of 16. My first ever puppet, a clown, was created from this book. I still use the puppet body design in today's classes! Nearly 40 years on...

Fantasy Folk

Moving to Ireland saw the start of my Fantasy Folk Artist Dolls and Puppets. I had my work in shops, and has solo exhibitions. I work on Private and corporate commissions. Including the Waterford Crystal one, I wrote about a while back. A puppet/animated related work was that of Ballycardool  by Jimmy Marukami. I also taught puppet making with two young art students from Finland, and in a group home, in the months before illness changed my life in 1998.

Puppet Power

During this work at the group home with teenagers, I realised the Power of Puppets. I think there were about 6 youngsters in the group. All Very Eager to work with me. We had made the heads of the puppets and had started on the hands. One young lad of about 13 had made a clown's head. Gorgeous. Funny. Just like himself. But when he made the hands, they were closed fists.
Powerful stuff.

I still feel bad for leaving these youngsters without finishing their puppet. I was too ill to even sit up, not to mind teach. 19 years later I still want to work with them. They probably have kids of their own by now, but if they read this, please get in touch.

Moving on

Puppets made their return in a big way when I started to facilitate the Life Outside the Box Puppet project with fellow members of the Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA) in 2015. This project catapulted me into the Puppet Power World, and into that of the Puppet Symposium. I just didn't see it coming! 

Yes, I know I was invited to talk about the project. And yes, I was a little scared to say my bit amongst researchers, and speakers from all over the world. People who are involved with puppetry for years, and know what they are talking about.

As it turned out, I also know what I am talking about. 

I know the journey I made from childhood in dolls and puppets, from being an artist, witnessing the powerful ways puppets can explore challenges in our lives. I have seen it. I have lived it. 

I just didn't realize that what I have been doing in my work, especially working with others with disabilities, while living with disability myself, represents a unique experience. 

Puppetry and disability

One of the first speakers Moira Jenkins, a lawyer, puppeteer, and lecturer, talked about the UN Convention of the rights of a person with disabilities - Which by the way is still not ratified by the Irish government - to be involved in the arts. More than just participation. We have every right to be respected as the originator and creator of our own work. (Article 30(2)  Including puppetry. 
Arts as a practice, not therapy.

I was nodding like a lunatic at so much what Moira was saying. Especially when it came to those horrible terms like 'service user' which I was labeled when a member of the IWA... Also when it came to context providers not just content providers. I created the context with my project, and so did my fellow members! Proud of that.

Puppets as story tellers 

Over the two days I filled my head with images, and words, and stories, and opportunities. Some I listened to at the symposium, others via Skype while lying on my hotel bed. Thank you Emma for providing this option for me. 

I was in awe with the presentation by Andrea Markovits from Chile, who talked about the puppets and traumatic memory project. Exploring the  pain felt by the public of the past regime in Chile, the families of the disappeared, the tortured. Silent puppets. Beautiful puppets. Powerful stories.

There were speakers from Japan, UK, Brazil, Germany, Finland, Portugal, Ireland, and Costa Rica (I think).
Subjects were: Well being, Disability, Hospital and care settings, and mental health. But even within these there was such a variety of subjects.

The speakers were either researchers in the field of puppetry, for example Persephone Sextou's 'Theatre for one' with children in hospitals, to Caroline Astell-Burt who teaches at the London school of puppetry. Antje Wegener who uses puppets with kids dealing with trauma. Or puppeteers with their own story to tell. (See all names here).  I loved how Oscar Goldszmidt worked with youngster with cerebral palsy, and enabled them to manipulate puppets...

The talks that touched me most were the ones where puppets transformed the lives of their makers. Most of the time by surprise. Puppets made Emma Fisher come out as disabled. A bit like coming out as LGBT. It informed her thesis about puppets and disability, which was initially about others with disability. For some the puppets they created supported them during mental health challenges. For example Kate James-Moore, and Aaron Jean Crombe. I think it was Joni-Rae Carrack, who said 'Puppets can be both objects and subjects',  in her talk about anxiety. Kate said that 'puppetry saved her life'.

The whole experience left me filled with images, and thoughts, and questions of where to go from here? It feels like there is no going back now. No going back into my box!

To me this photo says it all:
Puppet Johnny Dwyer and myself 
stepping into life...

© Photo by Nik Palmer  of Noisy Oyster
More photos by Nik see HERE

What next?

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Marisa Latimer after the symposium. She told me about her travels with puppets. Through college, working with puppeteers, stories from Japan. Expanding on the world I kind of knew existed.
Listening to her, I remembered the exact location of a puppet theatre in the city of Haarlem, where I lived 8 years before moving to Ireland. I always wanted to go in. I never did. 
I also remembered a very vivid dream of a kind of underground puppet theatre/museum. I remembered that I had copied puppet making books from the library over 20 years ago. How I have one business card with a puppet sitting by a pile of books, for at least 19 years.
That I was part of the puppet festival during a doll making week in France the year I got ill. 

I had communications with Kate, Aaron, Emma and Perspehone. And a meeting with Moira. Which has led to the invitation to give guest lectures at CIT, and a collaboration about Disability Rights and Puppetry. And other future possibilities for my work...
It is all hugely exciting. 
I am aware my body might not (yet) be as excited as my head, but I am certainly going to take small steps into this world which has been presented to me. Loud and Clear.
I hear you!!

Puppets have been part of my life. A hidden part of my life. Deep in my psyche.

They, and me, are ready to come out and play!!

To finish this amazing week, I learned that The life outside the box project was also mentioned in a Journal..., see link below.
The puppet making classes are going well, and I have already four more students lined up.
And I am now a member of the Irish UNIMA (International Union of Puppets, a non-governmental organisation affiliated to UNESCO)

Phew.

Most of the speakers and visiting puppets at the symposium.
Mad bunch!

Further reading and links

• Symposium Images by Nik Palmer 
• Article in Journal which mentions the project

Attending the Puppet Symposium - an account in images

A visual account of the Puppet Symposium at UCC, Cork, last week

Johnny being taken out of his box
by Corina and Pascale
photo © Nik Palmer of "Noisy Oyster"

Persphone Sextou with Johnny Dwyer
Love at first sight

More photos by Nik Palmer see HERE

Other photos of the speakers at the symposium see UNIMA facebook page

Johnny, taking it all in

Corina Duyn giving her presentation at the Symposium
images from UNIMA research committee  Facebook page

Corina Duyn giving her presentation at the Symposium
images from UNIMA research committee  Facebook page

Puppet gathering at the Symposium.
images from UNIMA research committee  Facebook page

Most of the speakers and puppets at the Puppet Symposium.
images from UNIMA research committee  Facebook page

Film screening at the puppet festival

The Broken Puppet: A Symposium on Puppetry, Disability, and Health

Corina Duyn, facilitator of the Life Outside the Box Puppetry project 

has been invited to give a talk about her experience of making puppets 

throughout her life and during illness, 

as well as sharing the empowering aspects she encountered 

during the creation of puppets with her fellow members of the 

Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA),

 at the upcoming international symposium 

The Broken Puppet: A Symposium on Puppetry, 

Disability, and Health

1st and 2nd of August 

at UCC, Cork, Ireland 

Connolly Complex (adjacent to the Granary Theatre) on Western Road, 

directly across from the River Lee Hotel. 

Rooms ConnA and ConnS4 will be signposted on either side of the building. 

Click HERE to register/book tickets

The Life Outside the Box film will be screened 

on 1st August during the Puppet festival in Cork
on the ground floor of the Village Hall.

Johnny Dwyer is ready to travel to Cork!!

Details from eventbrite: 

"The UNIMA Research Commission in collaboration with Cork Puppetry Festival, University College Cork, and Mary Immaculate College, is delighted to announce a two-day symposium exploring the ways puppetry intersects with disability and health. Academics and practice-based researchers will present papers, provocations, and presentations of practice-based research.

“The emergence of a disability culture is difficult but tremendously liberating. Such a culture enables us to recognize the pressure to pretend to be normal for the oppressive and impossible- to -achieve hurdle which it is. Most importantly, this culture challenges our own prejudices about ourselves, as well as those of the non-disabled culture.”- Jenny Morris

“The object offers itself to the individual as an extension of his being in the surrounding universe, and augmented affirmation of his total existence.” - Roger Daniel Bensky"

image: Research practice based on "Pupa" by Emma Fisher.
Ceramic puppet made in collaboration with Sheila Stone. Photo Emma Mac.

Registration for the event, held on the 1st and 2nd of August at UCC, Cork, can be done HERE

Schedule of speakers rom the UNIMA website:

Tuesday August 1st 2017

• 12.30 Registration
• 1.15 Welcome and introduction (Cariad Astles)
• 1.35 Keynote: Dr Melissa Trimingham: Puppetry and autism

WELLBEING PANEL

• 2.25 Moira Jenkins: Puppetry as a human right: relational citizenship
• 2.50 Andrea Markovits: Puppet therapy and traumatic memory in Chile post-dictatorship
• 3.10 coffee
• 3.30 Yasuko Senda: Heart-warming Smile Puppet Association
• 3.55 Oscar Goldszmidt: Social inclusion through puppetry: a case study with cerebral palsy
• 4.20 Caroline Astell-Burt: Closeness, touching and kinaesthesia
• 4.45 Antje Wegener: Therapeutic puppetry in Germany
• 5.05 Questions and discussion

Wednesday August 2nd

• 9.00 Registration
• 9.30 Keynote: Dr Persephone Sextou: Puppetry in hospitals, clinics and healthcare settings

Disability panel

• 10.35 Emma Fisher: The Broken Puppet: puppetry and disability
• 11.00 Corina Duyn: Life outside the box: puppetry, ME and disability
• 11.25 Roberto Ferreira De Silva: puppetry with disabled participants
• 11.45 Questions and discussion

Hospitals and care settings panel

• 1.10 Riku Laakkonen: Performing objects in palliative care
• 1.35 Matt Jennings: Acts of caring: puppetry in person-centred nursing
• 2 Gibdel Wilson: Puppets talk, communities listen
• 2.25 Poupak Azimpour: Listener dolls: a case study of women recovering from cancer
• 2.45 Questions and discussion
• 3.05 coffee

Mental health panel

• 3.25 Marisa Latimer: Shadow puppetry and dramatherapy
• 3.50 Kate James-Moore: Puppetry as a creative tool: struggle, control, power
• 4.15 Joni-Rae Carrack: Objective and Subjective: puppetry and mental health
• 4.40 Aaron Jean Crombé: Self-acceptance and puppetry
• 5.05 Lesley Burton: final reflections
• 5.30 Questions and discussion

Update 18th August:

• Story of puppets in the life of arts facilitator Corina Duyn
• Images of the symposium

'The World on View' interview with Corina Duyn - podcast

Podcast of interview by Bernadette and Stan Phillips on Tramore Community Radio 'The World in View' with Artist and Writer Corina Duyn.

Corina was the facilitator of the Life Outside the Box Puppet Project and curator of the Dis-ability ... This Ability exhibition.
This talk came about as a result of the exhibition, and starts at about 9 minutes in.