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Story

Little Amal walks with UAL

a tall puppet of a girl in front of a building with people gathered around it
  • Written byYana Kasa
  • Published date 21 April 2023
a tall puppet of a girl in front of a building with people gathered around it
Image credit: Little Amal, photography by Jieying Shao, 2023

Little Amal is the 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee child at the heart of The Walk.  She has become a global symbol of human rights, especially those of refugees.

We were approached by The Walk, the organisation behind Little Amal to partner on the production of the walk and host several workshops. The entire event consisted of 3 acts as an interfaith celebration across the London Borough of Camden as Easter, Passover and Ramadan coincided. The final act, Act 3 Light My Way, saw Little Amal walk from the British Library to Granary Square.

This was a collaborative project between Wimbledon College of Arts and Central Saint Martins, who delivered five lantern making workshops for invited community groups. During the week of 27 March, four public lantern making workshops were held at CSM and two at the British Library over the weekend of 1 and 2 April.

In addition, we helped decorate Granary Square as part of an Open Iftar event with 300 paper lanterns. These were designed, developed and prototyped by the technical teams at Wimbledon and Camberwell Colleges of Arts.

Find out more about Little Amal and The Amal Fund

“It was a real pleasure to work in partnership with The Walk on Little Amal’s visit to North London on Sunday 2 April. The project enabled cross college staff and student teams to work together, with amazing results!”

— Jayne Knowles Dean of Performance Art and Foundation
  • Little-Amal-Walk-2-Apr2023-Edited-Jieying-Shao-144.jpg
    Little Amal, photography by Jieying Shao, 2023
  • Little-Amal-Walk-2-Apr2023-Edited-Jieying-Shao-151.jpg
    Little Amal, photography by Jieying Shao, 2023
  • Little-Amal-Walk-2-Apr2023-Edited-Jieying-Shao-162.jpg
    Little Amal, photography by Jieying Shao, 2023
  • Little-Amal-workshop-1-Apr2023-CSM-Edited-Jieying-Shao-56.jpg
    Little Amal, photography by Jieying Shao, 2023
  • Little-Amal-workshop-1-Apr2023-CSM-Edited-Jieying-Shao-64.jpg
    Little Amal, photography by Jieying Shao, 2023
Project Leads

Jayne Knowles, Dean of Performance Arts and Foundation, Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

Nicola Gilcreest, Local Engagement Manager, Central Saint Martins

Ian Thompson, Outreach Manager, Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

Lantern design and development

Tyson Howard, Specialist Technician, Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

Supported by Matt Evans, Taylor Huggins, Will Waterhouse, and the technical teams at Camberwell and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

Workshop Facilitators

Dan Freeman

Katherine Hearst

Ros Wilson

(all staff on BA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts)

Students who made the 300 lanterns and supported the public workshops on Sat 1 and Sun 2 April:

Lanterns:

Patricia Ryan, Wimbledon College of Arts

Eve Sim, Wimbledon College of Arts

Hugette Tchiapi, Central Saint Martins

Nirav Upaadhyay, Central Saint Martins

Workshops:

Rebecca Heath, Central Saint Martins

Malina Pervaj, Central Saint Martins

Hal Warren, Central Saint Martins

Anna Zanelli, Central Saint Martins

Niloofar Taatizadeh, Central Saint Martins