What is Bridges Festival?
Bridges Festival is a 3 day long international festival of puppetry and animation. The festival takes place across Mississauga, a city with 820,000 residents, located just west of Toronto.
Bridges Festival’s mission is to inspire and ignite imagination, sense of wonder, playfulness and creativity of children and adults alike. The festival also has a very important mission to serve Ontario puppeteers by offering a presenting platform to Ontario based puppeteers; or if I put it in plain language we are committed to pay Ontario's puppeteers to perform.
Who is it for?
Our primary audience are families with children between 2 and 13 years of age. We offer a great selection of March Break events for all ages. Each event is marked what age is it appropriate for. You can come and see puppet shows, participate in interactive workshops, watch award winning short animated films and much more.
Where is the festival happening?
Bridges Festival 2022 is happening in Mississauga, at the Sampradaya Theatre, Bradley Museum, Art Gallery Mississauga, Halo Cafe, and Paradigms in Photography studio. These venues are located across the city of Mississauga, in the following neighbourhoods: Clarkson, City Centre, Cooksville, and Sheridan. The venues are accessible, and they have parking on site. If you are experiencing difficulties reaching any of our locations please feel free to call the festival's box office and our friendly staff will be happy to assist.
When is Bridges Festival?
Bridges Festival happens in March, juts before March Break. Most festival events happen on the weekend just before March Break school holiday. However, some events happen the whole month of March. The reason for choosing March is because World Puppetry Day is celebrated around the world on March 21. Since 2003, when it was first celebrated internationally, the purpose of the World Puppetry Day is to celebrate rich puppetry traditions around the world. World Puppetry Day is an initiative of UNIMA, an international association of puppeteers. The idea to celebrate puppetry around the world came from Iranian puppet theatre artist Javad Zolfaghari. He made a proposal at the UNIMA’s congress in 2000 in Magdeburg, and two years later, at the congress in Atlanta, the date of March 21 was confirmed and the World Puppetry Day.
How to participate as an artist?
If you are a puppeteer or a puppet theatre/company, and you would like to present your show at the Bridges festival, you can submit your show to our annual call for artists. The call opens in the spring and closes in the summer. If you would like to be notified about the next call, please follow us on social media. If you are working on a new project we would be happy to consider a partnership, and help you with providing space, a residency, and funding. For inquiries about partnerships please send us an email.