Life-sized animal puppets to be paraded through Greater Manchester this summer

  1. Home
  2. Art & Culture

Dozens of life-sized puppet animals are to embark on a journey through Greater Manchester this summer.

From the team behind The Walk with Little Amal – the Syrian refugee child puppet who made the journey across the world, and our borough, back in 2021 – comes a new life-sized spectacle called THE HERDS, which will visit Manchester as part of the opening of this summer’s Manchester International Festival (MIF).

The hugely-ambitious new public artwork is set to transform Greater Manchester into a ‘breathtaking untamed spectacle’ as a way of vividly dramatising the climate crisis.

Life-sized animal puppets travel will be travelling through the city centre, Heywood in Rochdale, and Pennington Flash in Wigan this July as part of their 20,000km journey from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle.

This is a public artwork on a scale never attempted before.

The animals are visiting Manchester as part of an epic journey – which began on 9 April from Kinshasa in the Congo – and as they cross different continents, the herd will grow in numbers and species including elephants, giraffes, antelope, lions, and others local to the area they are travelling through.

To help further highlight the scale of the climate crisis and the collective effort needed to fight it, the puppets are set to operated by local participants in each city – including in Manchester.

Because of this, Factory International and The Walk Productions are looking for amateur makers and DIY enthusiasts to join the puppet build, as well as 100 local people to help operate the puppets in Manchester, Heywood, and Wigan.

Life-sized animal puppets are being paraded through Greater Manchester this summer / Credit: Ant Strack

For the opening event of MIF25 on Thursday 3 July, THE HERDS first arrives in Manchester city centre and will scatter through the city’s main streets, so if you happen to find yourself between Cathedral Gardens and Market Street on the day, then you might just stumble upon them.

After opening MIF25, the animals are then abandoning the bustling city for the residential streets of Heywood in Rochdale on Friday (4 July).

For the final stop on their Greater Manchester journey, THE HERDS find a fleeting refuge in the wild beauty of Pennington Flash Country Park in Wigan on Saturday 5 July, and visitors are invited to explore the park’s winding trails and quietly observe as 70 life-sized puppets appear amid the trees and wetlands.

Amir Nizar Zuabi, who is the Artistic Director of THE HERDS, calls it a ‘a living breathing call to action that stampedes across continents’.

Read more:

“THE HERDS is an urgent artistic response to the climate crisis,” he added. “Through the beauty and ferocity of these life-size creatures, we aim to spark dialogue, provoke thought, encourage engagement and inspire real change.”

You can see THE HERDS in Greater Manchester from Thursday 4 – Saturday 5 July.

Featured Image – Berclaire (for The Walk Productions)