On Tuesday evenings, at The Twisted Coloring Book in downtown Champaign, a room fills with foam, fabric, yarn, glue and the particular kind of laughter that only happens when someone is holding a half-finished creature on their hand and making it talk. This is the weekly open studio of the Champaign-Urbana Puppet People — C.U.P.P. for short — and on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, from 5 to 7 p.m., the doors are open to anyone who wants to walk in and try.
The event is free. The premise is simple: you do not need to know how to make a puppet. The Puppet People's own materials say as much, with a cheerful bluntness. "Do I have to know how to make puppets? Of course not! The PP's have you covered!" The group describes itself as "a group of likeminded folk who enjoy creating and being silly together," and its stated motto is one of the better mission statements a craft group has produced: "Create what you wish existed."
The puppet collective makes its home at The Twisted Coloring Book, an art gallery and studio in the Lincoln Building at 44 E. Main St., Suite 403, in downtown Champaign, and that describes itself as "home to the a new puppet collective here in the Champaign Urbana Area." The gallery is not a one-note operation. Alongside the puppets, it shows work by a roster of local artists: Emily Alley, who works under the name The Fiber Phoenix; Leviticus Moore; Ann Alley of On Purpose Art; Sara Jones of Say It Ain't Sew Cosplay; Sheila Parinas; and fiber artist Maureen Henry. The space also offers notary services. It is, in other words, the kind of scrappy, multi-purpose artist-run room that small-city arts scenes run on.
The gallery's first appearance at the Boneyard Arts Festival, in April 2026, gives a sense of its range: acrylic paintings, metal found-object sculpture and jewelry, cosplay costumes, mixed media fiber art, ceramic sculpture and digital painting, plus hands-on workshops and a community rag rug that visitors could keep adding to. Puppets were a natural extension of a place already devoted to making things by hand.
Emily Alley, the fiber artist behind The Fiber Phoenix, is the organizing force behind the puppet nights. Her own biography explains a good deal about the spirit of the group. She taught art in the public school system for 15 years, she writes, and dabbled in many media before fiber became the center of her work. After a traumatic brain injury forced her to leave her teaching career, she turned to art full time — "my greatest healer and my silver lining," as she puts it. She later lived in western North Carolina, where she found a community of artists who inspired and challenged her, before the collective took root in Champaign-Urbana. Her site's tagline is "Out of the ashes, beauty will rise." Alley teaches classes at The Twisted Coloring Book on building foam-head puppets, which is the most direct on-ramp for a beginner who wants a structured start rather than an open bench.
For the Tuesday work nights themselves, the practical details are refreshingly low-pressure. Attendance is not mandatory — the group's FAQ notes that "sometimes we have to miss" and that it is up to each person how often they come. Supplies are partly communal: donated and purchased community supplies are available to everyone, though a project may call for something specific that you would need to bring yourself. Members can leave their materials and works-in-progress at the studio, on shelving in Room 402B, provided they bring a labeled box for their own supplies. And there is a membership fee of $10 per month, payable via Venmo, due on the 15th; the stated goal is to gather enough members to cover the rent on Room 401, which would become the dedicated puppet studio. The Tuesday nights are also where goals, membership and classes get explained to newcomers in person.
That ambition — a room of their own, paid for by a modest monthly pool — is the small, practical engine behind the whole thing. It is also why the group's framing leans so hard on welcome. The Puppet People describe themselves as "an inclusive group who strive to bring happiness, laughter and magic to those around us," and they are explicit that the point is not just to build objects but to bring them out into the community. "This group is all about coming together as a group, laughing, creating and bringing our puppets out into the community to make people happy," their page reads. "Cause we could all use some PP happiness."
For anyone who has never made a puppet, the appeal is easy to underestimate. Puppetry is one of the oldest performance traditions in the world and one of the most forgiving entry points into craft: a foam head, a bit of fleece, a rod or a hand inside a sleeve, and suddenly there is a character with a personality and a voice that did not exist an hour earlier. It is also, crucially, a social activity. The work nights are built around the idea that members teach and inspire each other — the group's page notes that you will "have the opportunity to inspire and teach each other during our work nights" — so a first-timer's questions are not an interruption but part of the format.
And if Tuesday does not fit a given week, the studio is generally open Wednesday through Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. for classes; the group invites people to text ahead and ask whether they can come work. But Tuesday is the night the collective gathers, and it is the night designed for the curious drop-in — the person who saw a puppet show once, thought "I wonder how they do that," and never found out.
The Twisted Coloring Book sits in the Lincoln Building in the heart of downtown Champaign, a short walk from the restaurants and shops along Main Street. On Oct. 20 the studio opens at 5 p.m. and stays open until 7. There is no ticket to buy and no experience required. You can arrive with nothing but curiosity, and leave with something that talks back.