Beverley Puppet Festival

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Beverley Puppet Festival

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The 11th Beverley Puppet Festival filled the East Yorkshire town's streets and venues 12th - 14th July 2024. Puppetry is for everyone, not just children.

Infortunately the 2026 festival cannot happen due to lack of funding. Please fill in the survey ... More info: www.beverleypuppetfestival.com The 10th Beverley Puppet Festival
15th - 17th July 2022

Puppets in Beverley creates unforgettable arts experiences that transform and celebrate the rural East Yorkshire town of Beverley. Our flagship event is Beverley Puppet Festival, which takes place once every two years across a weekend in July. Giant, fantastical creatures roam Beverley’s historic streets. Tiny, magical worlds are revealed to unsuspecting audiences in the Friary Gardens. The best of UK and European puppet theatre is brought to venues throughout the town for residents and visitors of all ages to enjoy. In 2015 Beverley Puppet Festival won the Remarkable East Yorkshire Tourism Award for 'Remarkable Small Tourism Event' for the 2014 festival, and was a finalist again in 2017 and 2019. Since 2005, Beverley Puppet Festival has welcomed thousands of audience members to experience the transformative, unique and inclusive world of puppetry. Puppetry creates magic though mixing many artistic disciplines, drawing people of all ages and backgrounds into other worlds. We aim to bring out the adult within the child and the child within the adult, to spark creative and critical thinking, to think outside the box. Puppetry builds confidence, creativity and exploration. Our outreach projects infuse hands-on puppetry experience into the lives of East Yorkshire people. We work with school children, care home residents and some of the regions most marginalised groups to facilitate joy, expression and learning. When not running the festival, we facilitate interim year projects that seek to explore in-depth artistic collaborations that celebrate the region. Team:

Co-Festival Artistic Director and Founder: Anna Ingleby
Co-Festival Artistic Director: Kerrin Tatman

Discover more:

www.beverleypuppetfestival.com

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Contact us via email: [email protected]

24/09/2026

More sad news for the puppetry community.... another wonderful human being has left us.....

19/09/2026

We’re back 🎉🎉

Fantastic family friendly festival just in time for with a programme of brilliant performances around and

All details to follow…keep a lookout for news 👀👀

30/07/2026

With great sadness I must share the news that much beloved puppeteer Ronnie Le Drew ,has passed away this week after a short illness. Ronnie gave a talk and performed at Beverley Puppet Festival in 2022, but also volunteered at the festival prior to that, and shone love, support and a guiding light for many puppeteers, both emerging and established. He had an impressive career (which he wrote about in his book), but is probably best known for his role as Zippy in Rainbow. RIP Ronnie, we will all miss you, and thankyou for helping the festival to be recognised by the sector as the milestone that it became, and for sharing your talents in Beverley.

24/07/2026

🤩 Beverley Puppet Trail - LAST CALL!!! Ends on 26th July 2026 🤩

To be entered in the prize draw: complete your trail sheet which can be collected and returned at any of the 19 businesses included in the trail. Prizes include cash vouchers and items donated by participating businesses. Check out our previous post for details.

🙏 Help save Beverley Puppet Festival 🙏
If you'd like to be part of our campaign to try and save Beverley Puppet Festival which was scheduled to take place this July but could not go ahead due to lack of funds, we would be most grateful if you could fill in our survey which focuses on feedback and how you could join as a voluntary Board member and/or Festival Co-Artistic Director. Support will be provided... trainees welcome too! Just visit the link below. Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHX9OhY9h56MXFQM0vZfLoQg5XvDp-pahNiyJHBatn1l3ZgQ/viewform

25/06/2026

🤩 Beverley Puppet Trail - 26th June to 26th July 2026 🤩

To be entered in the prize draw: complete your trail sheet and drop it in at any of the 19 businesses included in the trail. Prizes include cash vouchers and items donated by participating businesses. Check out the flyer for details.

🙏 Help save Beverley Puppet Festival 🙏
If you'd like to be part of our campaign to try and save Beverley Puppet Festival which was scheduled to take place this July but could not go ahead due to lack of funds, we would be most grateful if you could fill in our survey which focuses on feedback and how you could join as a voluntary Board member and/or Festival Co-Artistic Director. ( Support will be provided.... trainees welcome too! ). Just visit the link below. Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHX9OhY9h56MXFQM0vZfLoQg5XvDp-pahNiyJHBatn1l3ZgQ/viewform

06/03/2026

It is with great sadness that we share some difficult news. Unfortunately, our Arts Council funding application for the 12th Beverley Puppet Festival was not successful... But we are grateful to Arts Council England for being the main funders of the last 10 festivals. As a result of this year's decision, we are unable to go ahead with the festival that we were hoping to present for 17-19 July 2026.

This is deeply disappointing for everyone involved. A huge amount of work had already gone into planning an exciting programme featuring 25 companies, 3 venues, the town streets and Outreach visits to 10 schools - all ready to bring the Festival to life this summer.

The Beverley Puppet Festival was founded in 2005 and run biennially from 2006 to 2024. To all the funders, staff, artists, partners, volunteers, venues, stakeholders and audiences who have supported the project over the past 21 years: Thank You from the bottom of our hearts. We are incredibly grateful for your enthusiasm and commitment, and we are truly sorry that we cannot move forward as planned.

A press release will follow shortly - please bear with us - outlining a possible plan for the future. Thank you again for being part of the journey with us. It's been awesome. If you can, please kindly take a few minutes to respond to our survey: https://forms.gle/cstCCAZsR3MkTUAF6

Anna Ingleby - Founder & Artistic Co-director
Vicky Yannoula - Production Co-director

[Image: Breathe, by Half a String]

19/12/2025

Happy festive season everyone!
Our provisional festival schedule is complete and all applicants have been contacted.... We are now awaiting funding news and hope that we have good news next year 🤞

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Beverley

Website

http://www.beverleypuppetfestival.com/

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