See a group of people walking down the street shouting.
Now see a group of people walking down the street chanting, singing or shouting with a 12 foot, three person operated Statue of Liberty puppet.
That changes what that group looks like to the outside audience, right?
The People’s Puppets helped to change many Occupy actions, and are still a force for the greater movement working with dozens of groups from environmental, labor, racial and economic justice. The People’s Puppets still meet twice per week in their studio in Dumbo that is shared with several other activist groups to build visuals for actions!
One of their members, Kim Fraczek, is active in the anti-fracking, pro-decentralized renewable energy movement through Sane Energy Project, who works city and state-wide to bring an end to fossil fuels. This Sunday at Artrage Gallery in Syracuse, NY, Kim will be facilitating a workshop on Arts and Activism. She will review all of the visual actions that the Puppets helped to bring to life and move into her environmental focus through Sane Energy Art and what she has brought to that specific movement with her work with Beyond Extreme Energy blockade art, Whitney Pipeline street theatrics -- an offshoot of Occupy the Pipeline -- and other multiple environmental campaigns throughout New York State.
This workshop will hopefully inspire people to examine how their campaigns are run, and how to use creative methods to message and make change. How can we inspire people to learn about the plan of the fracking industry in New York State? We can look at and utilize the You Are Here interactive map that Sane Energy helped to spearhead or we can create a scavenger hunt-type game out of searching through the map to learn it, get the body moving and involved and teach ourselves new ways to gather and retain information.
The latter part of the workshop will involve creating 70 small dove kites for a Syracuse Peace Council event highlighting the 70th commemoration of the Hiroshima bombing to help bring a visual to the action they are planning for August.
