British institution founded in 1981 by Dr Malcolm Yates Knight, puppeteer, mask-maker, teacher and folk-singer. Registered in 1985 as an educational charity, the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre moved into its premises in Kelvindale, Glasgow, in 1989.
The Centre houses a theatre seating 80, a café, a foyer, a library and hands-on training workshops for the making of puppets, masks, a film and special effects studio unit, a materials store and offices. The Centre welcomes visiting companies who perform and give workshops in the Centre’s programme of Saturday courses for children and families. The Studio theatre may also be converted into a gallery for visiting exhibitions or into a conference and symposium space for lecture-demonstrations and conferences.
The foyer and café offer a permanent exhibition of Victorian trick and transformation marionettes, figures of the wayang golek from the workshops of Asep Sunandar Sunarya, other Asian masks and puppets, and characters from the Caricature Theatre of Cardiff. The Centre tours two collections: The Magic of Masks and Puppets and Behind the Mask.
The Centre organizes workshops for professionals, schools, associations and teachers, and its outreach work extends to prisons and hospitals. Between 1995 and 2004, in partnership with Anniesland College, a full-time, two-year Puppet Theatre Arts Diploma was offered.
Since 2005, the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre has continued its work towards the development of puppetry in Scotland, in the opening of a second performance space, a museum and a teacher training unit.
(See Great Britain.)