Hundreds of people enjoyed a biennial celebration of creativity and art with the welcome return of Skipton International Puppet Festival.

Skipton Town Hall worked alongside partners and festival founders Lempen Puppet Theatre Company to deliver a week-long, jam-packed programme of free and ticketed performances and workshops.

Throughout the week, Skipton Town Hall hosted a series of shows. Among those were Snip! Snap! Rapunzel Retold, a humorous and magical reimagining of the classic fairy tale and TeachRex: A Dragon’s Tale, a nail-biting story of bravery where the audience came face to face with flying giant beasts before the smaller, yet equally enthralling visual spectacular in hand puppet form, Dragon.

Enthusiastic audiences were treated to an afternoon of African and Caribbean culture with the Ghanian folk story Anansi and the Lost Sun, with the indoor programme topped off with internationally renowned theatre company TAMTAM objektentheater’s To Have Or Not Have a Western inspired story played entirely by puppets in the form of tools.

As an admired feature of the festival, the free outdoor rolling programme of puppetry returned to the Skipton Canal Basin on the Saturday and despite the poor weather, was very well attended. People witnessed Chinese glove puppetry with FESTIVAL! and pop-up show The Four Friends. Lempen Puppet Theatre performed two shows using a penny farthing as the centrepiece. Those lucky enough were able to see giant dinosaurs wandering around the town, as well as Zarafa the giraffe.

Skipton International Puppet Festival will return in 2025.