Herd instinct
In 2025, the life-size puppets of art project THE HERDS traversed the globe, revealing the fragility of our world – and the urgent need for actions to preserve it
Summary
THE HERDS, a globe–traversing art project, carried life-size puppet animals 20,000km from central Africa to the Arctic – exemplifying the fragility of our climate, and the desperate need for change. Created by director and playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi, the journey involved local performers in 11 countries, drawing huge crowds as the animals passed through markets and city centres and across mountains and glaciers.
Main image: Jostedalsbreen National Park, Norway
I have just watched the sun set – and then reappear in the same spot 10 minutes later. I am lying on the ground, exhausted, nine metres from a cliff edge at the end of Europe: Nordkapp, to be exact. I am staring out at the North Sea, which stretches endlessly out into the distance; the next mass of land is the North Pole.
The light is strange – almost oily – as night and day blend into each other seamlessly.
Dusk to dawn
We drove non-stop for 29 hours straight to get here. Muaz Aljubeh, our Head of Production, is sleeping in the back of the truck between the boxes. Boxes full of our puppets – kudus, giraffes, lions, zebras and an elephant.
I am also trying very hard to sleep, but am too exhausted – and too happy, because we have finally arrived at the end of our four-month voyage. So I wander out and find a fold in the ground to shield me from the dawn-dusk wind. And that’s where I see the most incredible sun playing hide-and-seek with itself.
I have 30 minutes to sleep before we need to start filming the final moments of the project that has consumed the last two years of my life: THE HERDS. How lucky am I to be here to see this natural beauty, I think. To know that this project meant so much to so many people.
How lucky am I.
I finally fall asleep, and the next thing I hear is Sarah Loader, our Executive Producer, calling my name. It’s time to start. As I jump to my feet, I see a group of similarly sleep-deprived people walking a herd of life-size puppet animals towards the edge of the cliff.
“Magnificent creatures, alarmed, frightened, powerful, running. Leaving us. Running away from us. Giving us a moment to grieve and a moment to fall in love again with nature…”
Origin of species
It’s so surreal – but then, so is this entire project.
THE HERDS is a public art project that travelled 20,000km to tell the story of the climate crisis through emotions. I was fed up with the science behind the climate debate – too many words explaining what we all know: we are ruining this earth with our greed. I wanted to create a project that talks to the heart, not the head.
The idea was simple: the animals feel that something is inherently wrong and start running. As they run, they crash into us, into what we think is safe, into what we think is human. In this unlikely encounter we will learn something profound about ourselves.
Magnificent creatures, alarmed, frightened, powerful, running. Leaving us. Running away from us. Giving us a moment to grieve and a moment to fall in love again with nature, with the other creatures we share this planet with, and even maybe with ourselves.
The team consisted of South African Ukwanda Puppets and Design Collective and our British production team – led by myself, a Palestinian. We set out to create a theatre production on an epic scale, one that would see a herd of puppet animals travel across 20,000km through 11 countries, all the way from central Africa to the Arctic Circle.
Working for months to understand the logistics of whether an artwork of this scale was at all possible, we were told time after time that it was not; that it was too complicated logistically and would require hundreds of people to successfully complete each event. That staging an event such as this in even one city is hard enough, but that doing it across so many countries in one go was madness.
But we ignored ‘impossible’ time after time until it became possible, or at least until we had no other choice but to do it.
“I think that perhaps now we have entered the time of grieving, the time of acknowledgement. We need to change and with change (always) comes the death of the familiar”
And so, in early April 2025, I find myself in a rehearsal room in Kinshasa surrounded by a group of talented young Congolese performers. It’s been raining heavily all night, and the city is flooded, but slowly the students start arriving to the rehearsal room. Their clothes are wet almost to chest height. They swam through the flooded areas to be here.
“It’s getting worse every year,” one says. “The rain. It is getting worse.” Climate change is not theoretical here. Not for them. It’s real, it’s happening, it’s an urban river they swim through to participate in an art project about what is happening to our planet.
On Day One we talk about rhythms, breath and how to hold a puppet properly. By the end of the day the performers are beginning to understand how to move the life-size puppets of African animals, and we are watching zebras trying to make their first hesitant steps.
Two years of theory suddenly becomes real in the breath of a gorilla. In the joy it brings to everyone in the room.
Dive deeper
Learn more about the voyage of THE HERDS
Seeds of change
Two days later, we are walking beside the Congo River with our majestic herd of animals. Our journey starts here, with this mighty river that has seen everything snaking alongside us.
For four months straight we travel, presenting 56 public events in 11 countries. We create huge outdoor performances everywhere we go, and the animals receive a powerful response, drawing thousands of people to the streets. We perform on the sand-swept streets of Dakar, in the bustling markets in Lagos, in the winding streets in Marrakesh, in the centre of Madrid, in the suburbs of Paris, on mountain-tops in Norway.
As we go, we teach puppetry to local participants, training more than 1,000 people who then help us bring the encounters with the animals to life. In each city we work with local artists to help us tell the story: choreographers, theatre makers and musicians.
We traverse different environments, each with different cultures and different challenges, but one refrain we hear as we travel the globe is how fragile things feel. Ecosystems collapsing, human and non-human habitats becoming more agitated, more vulnerable. Four months after we set off from a flooded Congo, we perform in blistering Norway – where reindeer are running into shopping centres to escape the extreme heat.
Into the wild
I was tasked with leading this project to change the narrative but, as I take one last rest on the ground near the edge of the world, I think that perhaps now we have entered the time of grieving, the time of acknowledgement. We need to change and with change (always) comes the death of the familiar.
But I also feel optimistic, because I have met thousands of people who are willing to work together to achieve something that seems impossible. Something non-rational, something like an act of love, something like taking a herd of puppet animals across two continents and all the way to edge of the unknown.
Provoking change
Founded in 2019, The Walk Productions creates large-scale participatory public art that brings people together to celebrate, challenge assumptions, rethink narratives and, ultimately, provoke change. It is led by Producers David Lan and Tracey Seaward, Artistic Director Amir Nizar Zuabi and Executive Producer Sarah Loader.
The company’s first creation was THE WALK: The Journey of Little Amal, a 12-foot-high puppet of a Syrian refugee child who travelled the globe and became a symbol of human rights (especially those of refugees) in the process.
The puppets for THE HERDS are designed by Ukwanda Puppets and Designs Art Collective (Luyanda Nogodlwana, Siphokazi Mpofu, Sipho Ngxola), Craig Leo, Simon Dunckley, Hansie Visagie Tundra Dunckley and Kim Bednall. The puppets were made from upscaled and recyclable materials – primarily cardboard and plywood – with a focus on bio-degradable and organic materials.
Both THE WALK and THE HERDS are award-winning projects that have been experienced by more than 2 million people to date, across 26 countries and five continents.
Amir Nizar Zuabi is an award-winning playwright and director. Currently Artistic Director of THE HERDS and The Walk Productions, he was the founding Artistic Director of ShiberHur Theater Company in Palestine and an Associate Director of the Young Vic Theatre.
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