Street Art Resources

Learn more about street art traditions, puppetry, parades/festivals, and other Foolish stuff by exploring the resources below. You might want to get yourself a fresh cup of coffee and an extreme-Dagwood sandwich, as you could easily wind up spending hours immersed in these cool materials. Thanks to Lauren Hantz and Meredith Hoffman (two of our former UROP students) for compiling all this info.

Festivals (International)
Festivals (USA)
Databases
Organizations
Education (International)
Education (USA)
Artists/Performers
Children’s Activities
Other

Festivals (International)

Artists In Piazza (Italy): International Busker Festival
Chinese Festivals: Great details about the most important Chinese festivals. Includes information about the history of each festival, food, artwork, and great pictures.
Edmonton International Street Performers Festival (Canada): Large list of performers from Canada and US
Fremantle Street Arts Festival (Australia): Includes information about several different festivals throughout the year such as a Children’s Festival, a Street Arts Festival, and many more.
Halifax International Busker Festival: Easy to navigate site with great information about busking and the festival. Includes lists of special events, performers, vendors, and photos.
Viareggio Carnival
World Buskers Festival (New Zealand): Information about a 10-day festival catering to hundred of thousands of people. Includes lists of performers and schedules.

Festivals (USA)

Coney Island Mermaid Parade: The nation’s largest art parade. Celebrates mythology of Coney Island. People dress up and make floats. Each year, a different celebrity King Neptune and Queen Mermaid rule over the proceedings.
In The Street Theatre Festival (San Francisco)
Illinois International Festival of Puppetry
National Day of Puppetry
The O’Neill Puppetry Conference
Oakland Chinatown StreetFest (California): Good information about a festival held in the Oakland Chinatown. Includes cultural performances and street vendors.
Puppetfest Midwest: Festival at Missouri College.
PuppetFest Midwest
Puppet Rampage

Databases

Fool’s Paradise: Site designed to help set up street shows. Includes helpful tips for putting on street shows, along with lists of hundreds of acts and contact information.
Metacafe World
Performers.net: Huge list of resources, festivals, and vendors from around the world.
The Puppet Homepage
PuppetLOVE 2007
Puppeteers of America
Puppetry Homepage: A list of colleges with puppetry and related programs
Puppetry Lab
Street Arts and Busker Advocates: Lots of information about street festivals, court cases dealing with street performers, and the ethics of busking.
UNIMA

Organizations

ActALIVE: An international group that uses art and performance to address issues such as HIV/AIDS, poverty, hunger, human rights, etc.
Bits ’N Pieces Puppet Theatre
Bread and Puppet Theater: Puppet and Cheap Art company that focuses on political and social ideas. It’s one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theatrical companies in the country.
Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta
The Crabgrass Puppet Theatre
Detroit Puppeteers Guild
Familie Floez (Germany)
The Frisch Marionette Company
Great Arizona Puppet Theatre
Handspring Puppet Company (South Africa): Started making plays for children, then began making more advanced theatrical productions. Includes basics for how they construct their puppets, a photo gallery of past productions, lists of awards and exhibition, and more.
Jim Henson Foundation
Kids on the Block Puppets: Puppet company that puts on performances that address various disabilities and social concerns — it specifically is aimed towards children and education.
Luna Theater: Theater in Boston that focuses on giant festival puppets.
Mandalay Marionettes Theater (Myanmar): Theater interested in education of current events, literature, history, and social events. They have also participated in AIDS educational programs.
National Capital Puppetry Guild
Oily Cart Theater: Theater in Britain that works entirely with children. Many times it is in schools, educational events, or with children with disabilities. This site is very easy to navigate and has some great information about their shows and how they work with kids.
Other Hand Productions
Puppet Art
Puppet Theater of Japan: Bunraku
Puppets in Prison
PUSH Physical Theatre: Includes definition of physical theater, the philosophy behind it, information on education, performances, and videos.
Redmoon Theater: Theater company that mainly does public work.
Rubber Monkey Puppet Company
Sandglass Theater: Theater that combines puppetry and physical theater.
Snuff Puppets: Puppet company in Australia. They focus on wearable and large-scale puppets. It includes information on workshops, children’s projects, and political pieces.
Wise Fool Community Arts

Education (International)

Ecole Superieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette (France): Includes links to theaters, festivals, schools, museums, etc.
Puppetry schools around the world: Info on and links to programs in over 30 countires.
London School of Puppetry

Education (USA)

CalArts New York
Dell’Arte School of Physical Theater
Environmental Encroachment
University of Connecticut (BFA and MFA in Puppetry)
Strings, Hands and Shadows
Toronto School of Puppetry

Artists/Performers

Basil Twist
Gary Friedman Productions: Puppeteer who has worked in theater, television, heads workshops, and puts on shows with educational value. They comment on such issues as AIDS, abuse, government, prisons, etc.
Lee Nagrin: Director/artist who has worked with Basil Twist.
P. O’Connor Puppetry
Sha Sha Higby: Artist who creates really unique puppet-like sculptures to comment on movement and dance. Her site includes plenty of pictures of these sculptures, interviews, an artist statement, and more.
Wise Fool New Mexico

Children’s Activities

Chinese New Year Crafts: Great site filled with hundreds of craft ideas for basically every holiday. This is actually part of a parenting website, so it has a lot of ideas for children’s activities.
Crafts for kids: Organized alphabetically, by materials, and by holiday. Literally hundreds of simple crafts like puppet-making, masks, instruments, cards, etc.

Other

One Way Street
The World of Puppets