My Territory

Three approaches to animating the inanimate...

• Children and Toys
• Adults and Childhood Toys
• Puppets and Puppeteers

Children and Toys

How do children form relationships with inanimate object?

"Toys are opportunities for play, for exploration, 

and for social interaction; an educational toy that promotes these will have a positive effect, but so will an everyday household object - if used in the right way." 

"Every child at play behaves like a creative writer, by creating a world of his own or ... By imposing a new and more pleasing order on the things that make up his world." - Sigmund Freud.

Adults and Childhood Toys

If a person can form a relationship with a childhood toy through to adulthood, can they form relationships with other objects?

The Velveteen Rabbit is a story about how toys become real and what happens when childen do not need them anymore. 

"He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey...he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all the little Rabbit cared about...when you are Real shabbiness doesn’t matter."

Also see: www.toy-secrets.blogspot.com

Puppets and Puppeteers

How do puppeteers relate to inanimate objects in order to animate them?

To animate is ...

'to give life and soul to a design, not through copying but through the transformation of reality.'