Our programs
Five ways we keep the art alive.
Ventriloquism survives when its history is kept, its artists have somewhere to work, the public gets to experience it, and a new generation can find the door.
Our programs work together to do all four.
1. The Archive & Historical Preservation
Keep the story connected.
The Archive documents ventriloquism through the people, figures, makers, works, organizations, and events that created it.
It brings scattered evidence together, attaches every fact to its source, and makes the result available to the public at no cost.
Historical preservation also happens away from the database: locating private material, scanning fragile paper, identifying people and figures in photographs, recording firsthand knowledge, and helping owners understand what they have before a story is lost.
2. Pop‑Up Exhibitions & Educational Events
Bring the history into the room.
An archive is useful when people can experience what it contains.
Our pop‑up events combine photographs, reproduced documents, figures and objects available for display, short talks, live demonstrations, and stories drawn from the Archive. They can be built for libraries, schools, festivals, conventions, community spaces, and partner institutions.
Possible programs include:
- A visual history of ventriloquism
- How a ventriloquial figure works
- The makers behind the figures
- Ventriloquism in radio, television, film, and popular culture
- Local performers and forgotten regional histories
- Live Archive sessions in which the public helps identify people, places, and objects
These are not exhibitions that ask people to stare silently at a case. Ventriloquism is a performing art. Its history should move, speak, and invite questions.
3. Live Public Performances
The art stays alive by being performed.
Ventriloquism does not survive because figures remain still. It survives when a performer, a character, and an audience meet in the same moment.
The Institute produces and supports live performances in schools, libraries, festivals, theaters, conventions, and community spaces. Some introduce an audience to the art for the first time. Others place working performers in conversation with its history.
The organization has supported free public performance for years, beginning with the Jazz Ambassadors under its earlier name. We are carrying that same model into ventriloquism: professional art, presented live, taken to the places where the audience already is.
Read, Laugh & Learn
4. Our Children’s Literacy Initiative
The audience becomes the storyteller.
Read, Laugh & Learn uses ventriloquism, magic, music, storytelling, books, and puppets to make reading active, social, and impossible to mistake for a worksheet.
Its flagship experience is the Read, Laugh & Learn Adventure: a high‑energy live program for young children in schools, libraries, and community settings.
Children see characters come alive. They participate in a story rather than merely listen to one. They discover how a performer uses voice, timing, movement, imagination, and an audience to make something happen.
Then the experience becomes theirs.
The four‑part promise
Every child experiences live ventriloquism, magic, music, and storytelling.
Every child leaves with a physical book that belongs to them.
Every child receives a peeper puppet: a pair of eyes that slips over a finger and turns a hand into a character. No elaborate construction. No expensive figure. The moment the eyes go on, the child has a puppet, and the puppet needs a name, a voice, and something to say.
Every child gets a beginning: a short performance, a story told through a character, and the experience of discovering that an audience will listen to an idea they created.
The goal
One million children.
One million books.
One million puppets.
One million first shows.
We are not trying to create one million spectators. We are trying to help one million children find their voices.
The peeper puppet is small enough to put into every child’s hand and immediate enough to use before the program ends. A hand becomes a face. A face becomes a character. A character becomes the beginning of a show.
It has already happened once.
A school show in Grove City, Ohio, in July 2026. The headliner was Bob Abdou, a working ventriloquist of thirty years. The opening act was Tommy, eight years old, and his partner Danny.
Tommy was already performing. What he did not have was anything written down to keep going with. Bob handed him a copy of How to Make Your Sock Talk that day and wrote afterward that he hoped the book would become part of Tommy’s journey.
Eight is the age Jimmy Vee decided he wanted to do this. He then waited ten years to find out how. Tommy got the book at eight.
That is the entire point of this program, and it happened in one afternoon at a school show.
Where the Adventure goes
- Elementary schools
- Public libraries
- Community and family literacy events
- Sponsor‑funded programs
- Larger regional literacy initiatives
The format can change with the room. The promise does not.
5. Youth Grants
Take unusual talent seriously.
Young people with uncommon interests are often told to be realistic long before anybody helps them become good.
Our grants pay for the practical things that allow talent to keep developing: lessons, equipment, entry fees, training, and travel. The amount may be small. The difference it makes is not.
Since 2014, this organization has supported young people including:
Rory Cain · Irish dance
Foundation support paid for additional private lessons. Rory moved up two levels and continued working toward the highest level of Irish dance.
Akeem Tonge · Martial arts
Akeem used his support for karate tuition and entry into the Florida Blitz Martial Art Tournament. He won two state divisions and continued toward his third‑degree black belt.
Briana Scales · Music
Support helped gifted musicians from the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra travel to Europe and participate in the Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival.
The discipline can vary. The principle does not: when a young person is doing something remarkable, we want the adults around them to notice.
Bring the Institute into the room.
Host an exhibition. Book a performance. Bring the Adventure to a school or library. Sponsor books and puppets. Contribute material to the Archive. Tell us about a young person whose work deserves attention.