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APPALACHIAN PUPPET PAGENT


May 11, 2019

The Appalachian Puppet Pageant is a giant puppet community arts parade organized by Knoxville-based arts nonprofit Cattywampus Puppet Council and rooted in East Knoxville. This parade seeks to bring together community members of all ages and backgrounds to share their stories and collective concerns through the visual and performing arts, while playing together and raising power and joy as a community. The community is invited to make giant puppets, masks, costumes, and other art and parade together as one!

This year's parade will conclude with a block party at Paul Hogue Park in partnership with St. Luke’s Episcopal and Our Community Organization, featuring live hip-hop, spoken word, and dance performances, as well as free kids activities, food trucks, garden activities, and more. Both the parade and block party are free and open to all!

THEME: "I See You"
The act of really seeing another person in all of their power, beauty, creativity, fire, and fabulousness, the act of offering them love and respect, allows that person to become their fullest, most authentic self. It helps them see their own power.

For this year’s Appalachian Puppet Pageant, we are asking our community to see one other and to embrace our liberations, our freedoms, as being intertwined. As a community and as individuals, how are we working together to fight against all oppressions? How does our work to undo racism or sexism or anti-semitism, also include dismantling classism, homophobia, and transphobia? What work do we have do to be able to really see and love one another? For this year’ parade, we ask you to envision yourself, your community, and the South as places of wholeness, strength, resiliency, beauty, humor, and artistry. We ask you to imagine what being your fullest self looks and feels like? As we come together to play and make for this year’s parade, as you design your collaborative and individual puppets and costumes, we invite you to honor and find inspiration in yourself, one another, and the path towards collective liberation.

Saturday, May 11 - 11am