Little Amal: Giant puppet to tour England during World Refugee Week

Little Amal - the giant puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian girl - is to travel around England later this month during World Refugee Week.

Her tour will see her visiting eleven locations including Bradford, Bristol and Folkestone in Kent, to meet new friends and share her message of hope.

Designed as part of a project aimed at raising awareness of the difficulties faced by child refugees, last year Little Amal made headlines by walking 5,000 miles from Turkey to the UK.

She also recently visited the Poland-Ukraine border, to meet children and families who had fled the war in Ukraine.

Little Amal will start her journey on 19 June in Manchester, the city she has called her home since arriving in the UK last year.

She will then move on and visit Bradford for World Refugee Day. The West Yorkshire city is one of the most culturally diverse and youngest populations in the UK.

She will then travel to places including Liverpool, Cheltenham, Bristol, Stonehenge and London before completing her journey on the beach in Folkestone in Kent on 27 June, the place where she first arrived in the UK last year.

Little Amal represents the millions of refugee children separated from their families. Her message to the world is: "Don't forget about us".

The giant puppet has been made by the same people who worked on the horse puppet for the theatre production of War Horse.

It takes three puppeteers to animate Little Amal - one person to operate each of her arms, plus a stilt walker whose legs become Amal's and who also animates her face.