Bringing in the New Year with style, students from Wimbledon College of Arts BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance impressed crowds attending London’s New Year’s Day Parade with a larger-than-life representation of the eponymous feline from the famous English folktale, Dick Whittington and His Cat.
The three-and-a-half-hour parade saw Wimbledon students travel from Piccadilly to Parliament Square, alongside over 10,000 participants and 50,000 spectators. The annual event reaches a TV audience of over 500 million.
This year, students from Wimbledon were approached by Merton Council to design and create a puppet for the parade.
Wimbledon’s team was made up of first-year BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance students Alice Wilson, Ellie Dowse, Izzy Ackermann, Mareyam Smith and third-year student Tayte Ewen. The group was also supported the course leader for BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance, Simon Stringer, and Emily Tupholme, a recent Wimbledon graduate from BA Production Arts for Screen which is now taught as BA Technical Arts for Theatre and Performance.
First-year student Alice Wilson talks us through the process of making the cat, the challenges the team encountered along the way, and their thoughts on the overall experience.
My name is Alice Wilson and I’m a first-year student studying BA Technical Arts in Theatre Performance at Wimbledon College of Arts. I got involved in the project back in September 2022 when we were visited by the Mayor of Merton Council and some of their aides. They came to speak to students about their hopes for the project, as well as giving us some background on the parade. Following this meeting, any students interested were offered the opportunity to work on the project. There was a group of 4 of us who were keen to get involved and we became the regulars, coming in on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays to complete the project. We also had help from a third-year student, Tayte Ewen, and a recent graduate, Emily Tupholme, who is doing really exciting things in puppetry at the moment.
The idea for creating a puppet of Dick Whittington’s cat came from our course leader Simon Stringer, but there was a fair amount of discussion and planning before we reached this idea. We decided early on that we wanted to create 4 mice to scurry alongside the cat and we also decided the cat would feature the mayor’s medallion, which it wears around its neck.
Yes! It was quite a complex process. We started with the frame by creating a miniature model of a cat out of wire to give us an idea of how we might want the final piece to look. One of the technicians then helped us create the armature, which we then built clay around to make a mould. After the mould set, we wrapped it up in clingfilm and masking tape so that we could plan the different shapes.
To do this, we pinned pieces of paper to the wall and drew out the different parts of the cat based on the clay moulds. After drawing out the shapes, we numbered them, cut them with a scalpel and scanned them. We then projected the scanned images of the different parts onto a wall and figured out how we would increase the scale to make the cat larger than life. There was a lot of going back and forth with a tape measure, but we got there!
Once we had the scale finalised, we cut out all the parts and started placing them on plastazote, a foam material similar to that used in camping mats. This would form the main body of the cat.
Our course leader Simon then started building a massive framework for the main body of the cat to sit on, which he created out of PVC piping. This framework also had to account for the people controlling the puppet inside, so we started to think more about how the cat might move. In total, there ended up being 11 of us controlling the cat.
At this stage, we were visited by theatre director and puppet specialist, Mervyn Millar. Mervyn has worked on numerous theatre productions including War Horse and My Neighbour Totoro and is hugely experienced, so we were lucky to have him. He came in to speak to us about how we could get the legs to move. With Mervyn, we researched the autonomy of cats and looked at the ankle joints and how they might move.
Once we had built the body of the cat and worked out how it could move, we added synthetic fur. I have to say, I felt like I was becoming a cat at one point with all the furballs!
There were several challenges we encountered when designing and creating the puppet. It was really challenging deciding where we wanted specific cuts. If it was a corner piece, how many pieces joined onto it? If it was an edge piece, how would it look? We went through this process for half of the cat and then reversed it, reducing material usage and time.
Another challenge was the claws. They look so lovely and so wonderful, but often hit the ground and there’s only so much contact glue can do! I ended up shoving quite a bit of wire through them to strengthen them and they look the part now. If people are focusing on the pedicure of the cat, I’d say there’s bigger problems at play!
The biggest challenge was trying to get enough people that are willing to operate it on New Year's Day, but we were lucky to have enough volunteers.
It was a fantastic experience! All the acts were so unique and creative, and filled with the same amazing joy and togetherness that connected the entire parade. We had a great time using the cat and rat puppets to interact with spectators, waving and having a boogie to whatever music the other acts were playing. While physically tiring work, it was wonderful to be part of the parade and so rewarding to finally see our hard work come to fruition.
I want to thank everyone who came on the day to help operate the puppet, including other first year tech arts students, Lucy Cusack and Faye Lok, who were able to help on some of the final build stages of the puppet, as well as students from a number of different courses at Wimbledon. We genuinely couldn't have done it without them!
I think the sharing of skills really helped me build confidence in the skills I have. I’m 25 and I’ve already completed a degree, so I found this experience useful in terms of trusting the knowledge that I already have. It’s very reassuring. I'm quite proud of us all.