Walk with Amal (Marseille 2021)

Over the last few weeks we have noticed videos circulating about this enormous marionette figure performing in various Italian cities. Initially this did not seem something we would give so much importance to. However, last week as we were around the area of Ales a good friend of ours told us that she wanted to go see this same performance in Marseille and explained to us the story about this 3.5 meter puppet named Amal.

Amal was created by a group of mostly English people with the collaboration of various international teams, the idea was for little Amal to recreate the route which many people, including children, have to make every year from Syria to the UK in order to find their freedom and a future. In their description they talk about Amal in these terms:

”Little Amal, a young refugee, has embarked on a remarkable journey – an epic voyage that is taking her across Turkey, across Europe, to find her mother, to get back to school, to start a new life. Will the world let her? Can she achieve what now seems more impossible than ever?”

This journey started on the border between Syria and Turkey and has taken her all the way through Greece, Italy and will visit various cities around France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and Holland, finishing the European trip in Calais and Dunkirk where may refugees find themselves blocked before being able to cross the sea to get to the British Isles. Finally “Little Amal” will visit various cities in the UK before reaching her final destination in Manchester. On her way around all of the cities she has crossed many people, children, artists and associations who have supported her with concerts, shows, contributions and just by walking beside her.

We have been lucky enough to see her in the multi-ethinc city of Marseille where she first arrived by boat on the small dock near the MUCEUM. Here she took a look around the area where people followed her and children of different ethnicities shouted her name welcoming her to France.

After this Amal and all the people who came to see her were invited to step in the Museum where the various schools and associations could give her presents and pose together with messages of peace and unity

A few hours later Amal went to Catalan beach in the center of the city where she performed with a large group of dancers. Everyone, dressed in life jackets, performed a beautiful dance that ended with all of them diving in the water and exiting leaving the jackets floating in the water for a few minutes, this giving homage to the thousands of people who each year try to cross the sea in attempt to make it to Europe and sadly disappear into the immense blue waters.