Teeny Tiny Toon well underway!

The second iteration of our project Teeny Tiny Toon is now in full swing.

Teeny Tiny Toon is a celebration of Newcastle and the people who live here, told through puppetry. This project brings together 500 people aged 5 to 80+ living in the West End of Newcastle to take part in storytelling/puppetry workshops with local artists during 2025-2026. The result will be a co-created film, telling residents’ stories, shown at 5 pop-up celebratory screenings and a community exhibition. This is the second time we have delivered Teeny Tiny Toon, following a successful pilot in 2021 in Benwell & Scotswood.

What does a Teeny Tiny Toon workshop look like?

Participants take part in two workshops to complete their Teeny Tiny Toon journey.

1. Design your puppet character. This could be of you, or someone from your imagination!

2. Using your drawn design, bring your character to life as a 3D puppet. This year's Teeny Tiny Toon workshops are based on Sicilian marionettes.

3. Next lets explore stories of where we live. These could be your own stories or ones you have heard about your area. We will use these stories to help us create a script for a short film.

4. Finally lets bring all of the elements together - our puppets, script & stories, and...performance! We are now going to create a short film that celebrates where we live and the people who live there.

Who is involved?

This 2025-2026 edition of Teeny Tiny Toon is focused in the West End of Newcastle, specifically in wards: Lemington, Denton & Westerhope, West Fenham, Blakelaw & Cowgate, Benwell & Scotswood, Wingrove, Elswick, Arthur's Hill and Monument. 500 residents living in the these wards will participate in 50 workshops, with children from as young as 5, up to carehome residents 80+. All workshops are free to participants to attend.

The project is being led by our Participation Coordinator & Lead Artist Molly Barrett-Manasseh. Molly is a Suffolk born, Newcastle based, designer/ maker and arts facilitator. Since graduating with a BA hons in Theatre design in 2007, where she specialised in small scale touring and puppetry. More recently, she completed a  Primary General PGCE in to further embed her educational skills. Over the years, Molly has worked as an artist across many visual art forms and mediums, including puppetry, theatre, installation art and sculpture. Molly has made puppets for companies such as Northern Stage, Live Theatre, Alphabetti Theatre, Nutmeg Puppets, and created her own shows though Kinaesthetic Theatre and Club Adelphi.

She is passionate about sharing her skills as a maker and giving people of all ages the opportunity to learn more about their world, how it is made and the stories it holds, through creative workshops. She has previously worked as Lead Maker at Life Science Centre, Schools Facilitator and Creative Associate at Seven Stories National Centre for Children's Books, as well as through freelance facilitation. Molly is very excited to continue to develop fun and interesting engagement opportunities as part of the Moving Parts Arts team.

Teeny Tiny Toon is funded by Scottish Power Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation and Community Foundation North East. Thank you to all of our funders for making the project possible!

Our Artistic Director (and Badger) on our Teeny Tiny Toon stall at the Scottish Power Foundation Awards 2025 in Glasgow. We were thrilled to be nominated in the Innovation category, along with some other amazing charities!