Continuing an ENDANGERED CRAFT and promoting an ENDANGERED SPECIES
My name is Sarah Vigars and, if you are not already familiar with my work, I am a puppet maker specialising in WOOD and STRINGS. I am based in South Devon (UK) with a workshop situated on the southern edge of Dartmoor National Park.
In 2023 MARIONETTE MAKING was added to the Heritage Crafts Association’s RED LIST of endangered crafts. I am proud to be one of the few remaining professional makers of marionettes in the UK! I currently puppeteer in 'Flying with Strings', a live puppetry and music duo.
I am asking for donations to fund my next puppet build: a marionette puppet of an EURASIAN CURLEW. In 2015 curlews were added to the UK’s RED LIST of endangered birds. Therefore, by making this project happen, I will be continuing an endangered craft AND promoting an endangered species!
The finished curlew marionette will be incorporated into a new street theatre performance with my company Flying with Strings. You can view examples of my previous work by visiting the Flying with Strings page on my website or by taking a look through my online portfolio of puppet-making commissions. Read on and I will delve deeper into HOW and WHY I want to make this project happen…
How will I use the MONEY I raise through this campaign?
I have calculated my funding target of £4,500 from the following costs:
- 6 weeks of puppet building with a weekly salary of £650 = £3,900
- Materials budget = £250
- Plus a £350 buffer zone to cover Crowdfunder fees (5% platform fee + 2.4% + 20p per donor)
Any money raised in excess of my initial target will be used to build smaller puppets and props for the performance. I will publicly share updates about the puppet build by posting photos and videos to my Instagram, Facebook and Crowdfunder pages. I intend to start building the curlew puppet in Autumn 2024.
What is a MARIONETTE and why are they ENDANGERED in the UK?
Put simply, a marionette is a puppet on strings, operated from above by a puppeteer. They are puppeteered on the street or in theatres. In a traditional marionette theatre, the puppeteers are disguised from view on a platform above the stage, otherwise known as a ‘bridge’.
As a form of live performance, marionette theatre has deep roots across the world, the oldest traditions stemming from China and India. Popular in Europe during the 19th Century, marionette theatres declined rapidly following the First World War, due in part to the ascent of moving pictures and more contemporary forms of animation.
Today, marionettes are a rare sight and therefore regarded as a novelty act. Marionette theatres are an even rarer phenomenon. Many professional puppeteers and theatre directors feel daunted by the complexity of the strings. Meanwhile the logistical challenges of touring a marionette bridge has deterred many companies from continuing the tradition, favouring more portable and lightweight endeavours.
In 2023 marionette making was added to the Heritage Craft Association’s RED LIST of Endangered Crafts. Drawing on the conservation status system used by the Intentional Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the HCA uses four categories of risk to assess the viability of heritage crafts: ‘viable’, ‘endangered’, ‘critically endangered’ and ‘extinct’.
"Crafts classified as ‘endangered’ are those which currently have sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation, but for which there are serious concerns about their ongoing viability. This may include crafts with a shrinking market share, an ageing demographic or crafts with a declining number of practitioners." (excerpt from the Heritage Crafts Association's website)
I was taught how to make and operate marionettes by puppet maker and puppeteer John Roberts, author of ‘How to Carve a Marionette’ and one of the UK’s only teachers within the craft. I am lucky to work and live just a few miles from his workshop in rural Devon. This proximity has enabled me to continue learning and honing my own approach to such a niche tradition.
I hope and believe that marionette making will not go extinct. YES, we are living in an age that is dominated by rapidly evolving technology. However I sense there is still a strong appetite for the handmade and the tactile, for artifice that is operated by human hands and not by AI. For me, making things with my hands is extremely grounding, an antidote to the intangible and sometimes destabilising nature of the virtual world. Strings are my counterculture in an age of algorithms!
What is a CURLEW and why are they ENDANGERED in the UK?
The Eurasian Curlew is a large wading bird, native to Europe and Asia. It breeds on meadow or moorland during the summer months and overwinters on marshlands and estuaries. It is commonly identified by its very long, curved bill (its taxonomical name Numenius Arquata means ‘new moon’ and ‘bow-shaped’). It is also well known for its distinctive ‘bubbling’ or ‘cascading’ call, a sound which has permeated the hearts and minds of rural Britain for centuries, featuring frequently in poetry and folklore.
The world wide population of Eurasian Curlew is declining at a rapid rate and it is currently classified as Near Threatened by the ICUN. However in the UK the story is even worse: in 2015 the Eurasian Curlew was placed on the UK's Red List of Endangered Birds. Over the last 20-30 years, the population of breeding curlews has declined by approximately 50% in England and Scotland, by 80% in Wales and by 90% in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The reasons for the curlew’s decline are multiplex. I am an artist by profession, I am not an ecologist, nor am I a statistician. However, I feel it pertinent to try and outline, in my own words, some of the threats that curlew face:
Firstly, the intensification of farming methods in the UK over the past 30 years has led to a dramatic loss of breeding habitat. Curlews nest on the ground amongst the long grasses of farmland, meadow and moorland. However…
- …many traditional lowland hay meadows have now been replaced with silage production. Silage is cut much earlier in the year than hay, before ground-nesting birds have established their broods.
- …the drainage of land to create pasture for livestock farming has reduced the range of suitable feeding and nesting habitat for ground nesting birds.
- …increases in livestock density have meant that both farmland and moorland are more heavily grazed and are therefore no longer suitable for large numbers of ground-nesting birds.
- …the increased use of pesticides on farmland has led to a dramatic decline in insect and worm populations, the main diet for many birds.
Secondly, the curlew and their offspring that remain are, in their diminished numbers, extremely vulnerable to further threats. Confusingly, these so-called ‘threats’ would be viewed as triumphs within the context of other important environmental causes. For example…
- Afforestation of upland areas (ie. the establishment of new woodland) is widely celebrated by environmentalists as a means to mitigate flooding and increase biodiversity. However, as curlew require open ground for nesting, an increase in afforestation means a decrease in suitable breeding habitat for curlew.
- Curlew are notoriously sensitive to disturbance and sadly wind turbines, regarded by environmentalists as an essential investment on our journey towards net zero, are likely to further infringe on curlew habitat.
- Curlew chicks and eggs are vulnerable to predation by foxes, badgers and corvids. One solution to this problem is predator control through regulated culling. However, to many wildlife lovers, the notion of this is unpalatable.
Why do I want to build a CURLEW MARIONETTE?
"You would think the silence from the fields would be deafening" (Mary Colwell - 'Curlew Moon', 2018)
I was born in the UK in 1989 and I have lived in rural Devon since 2012. Since 1985, the curlew breeding population in Devon has declined by 85% (Dartmoor NPA). Since I moved to Devon I have seen and heard a curlew just once. However, go back in time by just one generation and the call of breeding curlews was a common sound across upland and lowland Devon.
In her book ‘Curlew Moon’ writer and environmentalist Mary Colwell describes the call of the curlew as ‘conspicuously absent’ from the landscape of the British Isles. For members of my generation, born just 20-30 years later, the call of the curlew is inconspicuously absent. I feel as though I have been learning how to miss something that I didn’t know was missing.
In his book ‘Feral’ (2013), journalist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot describes this phenomena as ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, whereby each generation sets a different standard for biodiversity depending on their own lived experience. Much of our native wildlife is in decline and the reality of this is tangible to me. However, where curlew are concerned, the baseline has shifted too fast for me to notice, like a rug from under my feet.
In my work I jointly describe myself as both a craftsperson and an artist. If asked to describe my craft, I would say I sculpt puppets out of wood and animate them with strings. If asked to describe my art, I would say I create portraits. A good portrait artist does not simply replicate the likeness of their subject, be it person, plant or animal. Instead they aspire to capture the soul or spirit of their subject, the essence that makes a living thing alive.
"While we focus on the immediate and the obvious, creatures that occupy the margins can gradually fade from our consciousness until one day, gone." (Mary Colwell - Curlew Moon, 2018)
By creating an animated, lifelike portrait of a curlew, I want to help bring this endangered bird back into the foreground of consciousness and bear witness to its existence. To do so feels like my own small act of protest, but I will not be preaching from a soap box or shouting from a picket line. Instead I will use the tools I know how to wield with skill, flair and compassion.
"Protest doesn’t have to be loud and can be beautiful." (Jackie Morris, artist, on 'The Lost Words' book, 2017)
Links, sources and FURTHER READING
Marionettes
Heritage Crafts Association: Red List of Endangered Crafts
The Puppet Theatre Barge (London)
String Theatre
John Roberts
Oliver Hymans
Curlew
RSPB: Species Profile
BTO: Species Profile
The Wildlife Trusts: Species Profile
Curlew Conservation
RSPB: Curlew Conservation Advice for Farmers
Curlew Action
Curlew Life
Curlew Country
Curlew Recovery Partnership England
Dartmoor National Park Authority: Curlew Conservation
WWT: Curlew Conservation on Dartmoor
Duchy of Cornwall: Recovering Dartmoor's Curlew
East of England Curlew Recovery Project