A sudden loss can set the course of a lifetime. Malcolm sits down with master puppeteer and educator Tony Gee to trace the unexpected path from a father’s death in Singapore to world-record puppet shows, radical youth work, and a philosophy of making that places imagination at the centre of community life. What begins as a story of bereavement opens into a practical guide to meaning: build things together, tell honest stories, and let participation reshape what education can be.
Tony describes stumbling into puppetry through a Chilean allegory and discovering that the craft was never just about puppets. It was about autonomy, voice, and collective creation. He shares how a failed but formative nursery project in Brixton sharpened his commitment to participatory learning, why workshops became his chosen medium, and how thousands of children have co-authored performances that change the confidence of schools from the inside out. Along the way, we explore research into workshop practice, the power of story-led facilitation, and the delicate balance between structure and spontaneity.
The conversation doesn’t flinch from the hard edges: intergenerational trauma, an abusive stepfather, disinheritance, and the slow work of accepting “insolubles.” Tony speaks to synchronicity, the felt presence of loved ones, and the artist’s task to metabolise experience through making. If you care about creative education, community arts, grief, resilience, or how large-scale participatory events can heal a culture, this episode offers grounded insight and humane inspiration.
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Presenter
Malcolm Stern has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 30 years. He was a co-founder of Alternatives at St James’s Church in London and runs groups internationally.
He is the author of Falling in Love / Staying in Love (Piatkus 2004) and Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020). He co-presented Channel 4’s relationship series, ‘Made for Each Other’ in 2003 and 2004 and sailed on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ with Greenpeace in the 1980s. The book he is currently writing is an exploration of the shadow and its necessity in our evolutionary development.
To become equal to the dream sewn within us, our heart must break open and usually must break more than once. That’s why they say that the only heart worth having is a broken heart. For only in breaking can it open fully and reveal what is hidden within.” – Michael Meade
This is a series of podcasts based on the premise explored in Malcolm Stern’s acclaimed book of the same name, that adversity provides us with the capacity to develop previously unexplored depths and is , in effect , a crucible for self reflection and awareness. Malcolm lost his daughter Melissa to suicide in 2014. It slowly dawned on him over the following few years that he was being educated and an opportunity was being presented where new insights helped him forge a path through his grief and despair. As part of that cathartic journey, he wrote “ Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020 ) where he was able to describe some of the practices that had helped him shed light on a way through the darkness.
