Autism and Puppets
In early 2016, Cheryl Henson approached the Yale Child Study Center with an idea to look at how children on the autism spectrum can develop special relationships with puppets. Conversations during the initial stages of this study led Foundation Manager, “Z” Briggs, to develop the workshop Making Connections Through Puppetry to give educators better tools to utilize puppetry in their practice.
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
Puppets and Autism: A Special Connection
National Puppetry Festival 2023, Puppeteers of America
Academic Symposium for Puppetry in Education and Therapy
Friday July 21, 2023 2:00pm-3:00pm ET
Puppetry has a special ability to connect with neurodivergent audiences and can be used as an effective learning tool and bridge for communication and motivation. The Jim Henson Foundation hosts a panel discussion with Foundation President Cheryl Henson, Foundation Manager and Co-Artistic Director of WonderSpark Puppets Z. Briggs, Center for Puppetry Arts Education Director Aretta Baumgartner, Artistic Director of Drama of Works and creator of “Puppet Club” for neurodiverse puppeteers Gretchen Van Lente, puppeteer of Julia on Sesame Street and Artistic Director of Puppet Pie Stacey Gordon, and puppeteer Kieran Braun. 1 Hour.
**Learn more about the panelists here!**
Yale Child Study Center
From 2017-2021, the Foundation collaborated with the Yale Child Study Center on the first clinical research study on how children on the autism spectrum look at puppets. The study was supervised by Dr. Katarznya Chawarska and utilized puppet videos made with The Foundation. A paper on the study was published on August 4th 2021 in the journal of The International Society for Autism Research. You can learn more about the study here: Yale News article.
Making Connections Through Puppetry: Professional Development & Parent Workshops
Making Connections Through Puppetry is a professional development workshop series that teaches educators, therapists, counselors, and parents how to use puppets when working with children on the autism spectrum and neuro-diverse children. Puppetry can be used as an effective learning tool and bridge for communication and motivation. Participants who have taken this workshop have gone on to use the skills that they learn in many areas of students’ IEPs including joint attention, functional pretend play, social/emotional learning, empathy, de-escalation, impulse control, language learning and more.
Starting in fall 2016, two part workshops were offered by the Foundation to educators, counselors and therapists working in New York City’s Department of Education District 75 special needs district schools through the D75 counseling office. In 2019, the Foundation was awarded a grant from Next for Autism to expand this program. In 2020, the Foundation was awarded a contract to be a VSA program site through the Kennedy Center’s Office of VSA and Accessibility to offer online workshops for the 2020-2021 school year.
Both in person and online workshops are available directly through Z’s puppet company. If you are interested in learning more about this programming, please contact WonderSpark Puppets.
WonderSpark Puppets works with Museum of the Moving Image to offer workshops to educators, therapists and counselors for CTLE credit. Visit their websites for information on future workshop dates.
