Oct 20, 2021
Giant Puppet Highlights the Crisis in the Oceans
Storm visits Dumfries in Scotland
On 16th October, the giant puppet, Storm, visited Dumfries. Made by Vision Mechanics, a company that stages community events with an emphasis on cross-arts collaboration.
‘Theatre of Spaces and Places’.
Storm stood ten meters high and signified a mythical goddess of the sea. Her hair made from seaweed, her body of driftwood and festooned with plastic debris, she walked the streets to draw attention to the extreme plight of our oceans. By doing so, she was requesting that we care for our coastlines and cherish our precious marine environment.
She first made her appearance at the music festival Celtic Connections in Glasgow in 2020, and has walked through a number of Scottish locations since then. You can watch her here.
The streets of Dumfries were busier than I have ever seen them before.
The statue moving through the narrow streets was astonishing. The rhythmic action of the puppeteers as they moved her slowly was like classical ballet choreograpy. The haunting music of Mairi Campbell accompanied the slow procession.
Turning her head as she went, children stared, spellbound. There had never been anything like this in their lives before.
We need our schools to be actively involved in educating every child about the precarious balance of nature that we are damaging.
We are all responsible for our environment.
It is easy to ignore what is happening in the oceans when we have no direct access to see what is beneath the waves. But every one of us can do a small part by collecting rubbish and disposing of our garbage with care and simply becoming more aware.
