Piglet, it’s a purple, psychedelic shapeshifter! The wild new creature prowling Winnie-the-Pooh’s wood

A New Resident in Ashdown Forest

Ashdown Forest, the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories, has gained a new fantastical inhabitant: Poppet, a shapeshifting puppet with a large tubular nose, eyes inspired by adders, and iridescent purple patches. The creature transforms from caterpillar to bird to a munching monster, delighting and frightening schoolchildren.

Created by costume designer Jack Irving and operated by 10 award-winning puppeteers, Poppet is the centerpiece of the Big One Hundred festival, a free event celebrating the centenary of Winnie-the-Pooh. The festival is organized by Trigger, an outdoor arts charity known for large-scale puppets like The Hatchling, a dragon that led Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.

Purpose: Connecting Children with Nature

Trigger’s creative director Angie Bual explains that Poppet aims to encourage children and families unfamiliar with the countryside to engage with nature. “Theatre and outdoor arts can really change place, change memory of place and change value of place,” she says. The puppet performs in the forest, devouring gorse and bracken, while subtly conveying a conservation message about managing heathland.

Ashdown Forest sees 1.5 million visitors annually, but visitors from deprived urban areas and ethnic minority communities are underrepresented. The Big One Hundred provides transport for these groups and disabled-led organizations. Bual, a British Asian, notes that spending time in nature isn’t ingrained in every culture; events like this help create emotional anchors.

Conservation and Heritage

Poppet was developed with local schoolchildren. The performances include an element where the audience “feeds” the puppet, illustrating the need to control gorse and bracken to maintain heathland habitats for species like nightjars and Dartford warblers. The forest has shifted from 90% open heath to 60% due to tree regrowth, requiring careful management.

Bual believes that the whimsical Poppet can inspire future generations to protect the forest, echoing how Christopher Robin Milne helped save it in the 1980s. “When the puppet came into the forest today, the kids screamed with laughter and emotion. You’re telling kids that nature means happy-happy-happy,” she says.

As for what Winnie-the-Pooh would think? Bual smiles: “He’d tell Piglet that he knew all about it all along.”