Trash Puppets

A plastic water bottle, some paint and a few bits and bobs that nobody wants, and it doesn’t take long to make something extraordinary out of nothing.

Puppets can be made from leaves, twigs, sticks and stones, from newspapers and scraps and with a little bit of effort, they can be every bit as mesmerising as anything you can buy from a shop. Children love making them. Adults, we know from our in-country workshops, too (just try getting them to stop). There’s something terribly therapeutic about the process.

At No Strings, we’re constantly coming up with new ideas for puppets children can make for free, depending on the subject matter of the film they’re exploring.

Trash Puppets made by looked-after children with disabilities in Port au Prince

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, No Strings visited a children’s centre for young people with disabilities as we worked on the key messages for our new films there. They put together these newspaper and water bottle puppets in no time, then performed little improvised scenes about how they wanted their city to look, full of streets free of rubbish.