The article explores the multifaceted process of creating the large-scale annual public puppetry event, The Barrydale Giant Puppet Parade, in the rural town of Barrydale, South Africa. It unpacks the complex layers of meaning and making arising through a co-creative puppetry project in a region of South Africa marked by poverty and the on-going everyday legacies of racial injustice and socio-economic disparity. It considers how developing puppetry arts within the Barrydale community has instigated a crucial mobilisation of individuals and the collective, as well as a trans-embodied praxis for generating new ecologies of self and community in the small town.