Date: Saturday 14th February 2026
Time: 3pm - 6pm
Venue: Thimblemill Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 1+

Join us to celebrate the opening of Smethwick Puppetry Festival with an afternoon of puppet fun!

Tatwood Puppets will present ‘Count Ocular’, bringing us close-up magic to transport audiences back to the bizarre delights of vaudeville and variety. ‘Blast Off!’ will be available for mini performances, and Animus Puppetry will be bringing their wild walkabout animals.

The official opening of the festival and “The Crankie Forest” exhibition will take place at 5pm.

By Three Idle Women

Date: Sunday 15th February 2026
Time: 5pm (90 minutes)
Venue: Dorothy Parkes Centre

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 5+

An evening of songs, stories and harmony that carry audiences through time, along the waterways of the UK.

With their deep connections to place, landscape and nature, Three Idle Women celebrate characters from the canals, both past and present.

Expect a blend of high quality music with interactive story-telling, visuals and films along with a crankie - a wonderful story-telling contraption.

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By Sabotage Theatre

Date: Monday 16th February 2026
Time: 3pm (45 minutes)
Venue: St Hilda’s Church Hall

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Let your little ones’ imaginations run wild when you join intrepid Ivy’s adventures in this muddy, musical puppet show.

Ivy can’t wait for it to stop raining so she can go out and jump in some puddles! When she answers a call for help from a stranded worm, she sets off on a journey through the forest where she meets all the weird and wonderful creatures that love to come out when it’s wet.

Sabotage Theatre’s bold puppetry and original music – including a barbershop quartet of singing snails, honky tonk blues solo and ska punk band - are complimented by playful storytelling and gentle guided audience interaction to inspire curious minds and intrepid explorers.

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By Sabotage Theatre

Date: Tuesday 17th February 2026
Time: 1pm (45 minutes)
Venue: Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, Level 5
For access info for the venue, see Spectra’s guide here

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Let your little ones’ imaginations run wild when you join intrepid Ivy’s adventures in this muddy, musical puppet show.

Ivy can’t wait for it to stop raining so she can go out and jump in some puddles! When she answers a call for help from a stranded worm, she sets off on a journey through the forest where she meets all the weird and wonderful creatures that love to come out when it’s wet.

Sabotage Theatre’s bold puppetry and original music – including a barbershop quartet of singing snails, honky tonk blues solo and ska punk band - are complimented by playful storytelling and gentle guided audience interaction to inspire curious minds and intrepid explorers.

Watch Trailer

By Antonella D'Ascenzi

Date: Tuesday 17th February 2026
Time: 6:30pm (40 minutes)
Venue: Hurst Road Community Centre

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 5+

A woman and a puppet inhabit the urban space, reconstructing the symbolic gestures of other women who have inhabited it before them. The bodies are linked by threads and this link is the beginning of the dance and of a story that is made and unmade.

A Thread Falls From My Hand is a reflection on memory and its knots. In every experience there are knots that have been hidden or forgotten. The knots are the history that stands still, that does not breathe, that does not run along a thread. Each knot preserves a story, it is like a hard, closed fist that slowly opens and lets this ‘thread of my fingers’ fall.

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By One Moment In Time & Bronia Evers

Date: Wednesday 18th February 2026
Time: 11am (50 minutes)
Venue: Thimblemill Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 8+

A girl in search of her missing heart. A woman on a quest for her slain lover. And a poem in pursuit of eyes to see and ears to listen.

Oakheart lives a cosy, secluded life in the forest until one day her heart goes missing. A wild journey takes her to the ends of the earth and beyond, as she searches for a story true enough to call her heart back home.

Storyteller Bronia Evers weaves together strands of an ancient ballad, a visual poem and an original fairytale, with spoken word and hand-cranked scrolling illustrations.

By HelenandJohn

Date: Wednesday 18th February 2026
Time: 1:30pm (30 minute performance followed by 30 minute workshop)
Venue: Bearwood Baptist Church Hall

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 5+

The Librarian is a comical slapstick children’s puppet show which celebrates stories, libraries and a love of books. A very silly Librarian tries to keep all her naughty books in order. Chaos ensues as characters dive into other stories and a monster who devours words needs to be stopped!

The performance is followed by a 30 minute story-creation workshop, where the Librarian invites the audience to create and share your own stories.

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By Noisy Oyster

Date: Wednesday 18th February 2026
Time: 1:30pm (45 minutes)
Venue: Lightwoods House

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Once upon a time there were three little pigs… and now it is time for them to leave home.

They set off to build their dream houses in the green field on the other side of the river. But then these homes are put to the test by a misunderstood wolf who has a little bit of a problem. And who is the grumpy person who lives under the bridge?

The Three Billy Pigs blends two classic fairy tales, The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff, with beautifully crafted puppets, light-hearted storytelling, live music and a little bit of eco-awareness in a pig stylie

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By Luminous Tales

Date: Thursday 19th February 2026
Time: 1pm (50 minutes)
Venue: Brasshouse Community Centre

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

There was once an old lady who wanted to play with the stars...

So begins the traditional tale which then takes off on an adventurous romp amongst the wild beasts of the stars. Fantastical shadow puppets leap across the scrolling background and even fly out of the box onto a large paper screen.

You are invited to stay and play with the puppets after the performance, and invent your own adventures among the stars.

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By Keep Drawing, Charlie!

Date: Thursday 19th February 2026
Time: 2-2:30pm, 3-3:30pm (drop-in)
Venue: Warley Woods

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 1+

Wizards and Warlocks are very busy people, and don’t have time to be training their dragon familiars and socialising them into functioning members of society. Do you know how long it takes to convince a baby dragon not to set fire to the expensive grimoires?

That’s where I come in! I’m Charlie, and I’m a Dragon Keeper. I take on dragons and help train them, sometimes I look after sick and poorly dragons, and some end up just... staying with me!

I’ll be walking my dragons around Warley Woods, so come and find me and see who’s hanging out with me today…

By various artists

Date: Friday 20th February 2026
Time: 4pm (120 minutes)
Venue: Thimblemill Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 5+

Join us for a selection of new work from the world of puppetry! Suitable for all the family, we’ll enjoy everything from tiny dogs to talking rubbish and some real-life unicorns.

Featuring new work from Cecil Green Arts, Made by Raccoons, Lollihop Puppet Theatre and two local up-and-coming artists, Ani Brighton and Nasrin Khanjari.

By Crooked Timber Theatre

Date: Saturday 21st February 2026
Time: 11:30am (45 minutes)
Venue: Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, Level 5
For access info for the venue, see Spectra’s guide here

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 1+

A charming puppet story in miniature showing a day at sea with the real Cromer crab fishermen of North Norfolk.

Set to the music of East Anglian folk musicians Bob Roberts, Tony Hall and Percy Brown, this wordless piece is a wonderful introduction to the joyful magic of puppet theatre!

Up Jumped The Crab uses puppets, traditional folk music, movement, humour and song to tell stories of the real crab fishermen of Cromer.

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By Tat Vision

Date: Saturday 21st February 2026
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: 1000 Trades On The Park

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 16+

Tat Vision presents the Prison Puppet Show!

Join the hardened criminal as he retells his prison life through found and handmade puppets, remixing classic prison films into Con Hair and The Cream Mile.

A fast, silly, and absurd puppet show full of laughs and mischief.

If you made a puppet in the workshop with Tat Vision, bring it along to join in a scene during the show!

By Grandly Strange Puppet Theatre

Date: Sunday 22nd February 2026
Time: 2pm (45 minutes)
Venue: Smethwick Library

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 3+

Mr Shooz is on his uppers. Nobody wants to buy his footwear anymore! Then something magical starts to happen…

Someone - or something - is making amazing shoes in the middle of the night and leaving them on his workbench every morning. Who are the midnight cobblers and how can he say thank you in return?

The Elves and the Shoemaker is a sole-full treat ideal for children aged 3 - 7 (and people with size 11 shoes too!). Shoe-horned full of delightful puppet characters and magical surprises.

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With Animus Puppetry

Date: Sunday 15th February 2026
Time: 11am-4pm (drop-in)
Venue: West Smethwick Park Pavilion Cafe

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 7+

Explore basic sustainable puppet-making principles to create your own charming marionette puppet from 90% recycled materials.

Work through simple to-follow instructions to produce a colourful bat or butterfly puppet in a design of your choice, which you can then operate and fly!

Little hands may need assistance from their grown ups.

With Tat Vision

Date: Saturday 21st February 2026
Time: 3-6pm
Venue: 1000 Trades On The Park

Admission fee: Pay What You Can
Age rating: 16+

Spend an afternoon crafting your own creations out of bits-and-pieces whilst enjoying a pint at 1000 Trades.

Join us again in the evening for ‘The Prison Puppet Show’.

This one’s for the grown-ups!