The Shoreline Shuffle is an outdoors marching event organized by the Water Access Group, a community organization in Kingston committed to advancing awareness about Kingston’s natural and cultural waterfront. The event will take place June 23rd involving hundreds of Kingstonians walking and paddling along 7.7km of our city’s downtown shoreline from Douglas Fluhrer Park to Lake Ontario Water Park. It will feature pedestrians and cyclists on land, and a flotilla of kayakers, canoeists and swimmers in the water. The goal is to enjoy the waterfront resources we have here in Kingston while becoming aware of the work that needs to be done to preserve, enhance and develop parts of it.

Having a critical mass of walkers, bikers and paddlers will be crucial to the success of this project. The collective sense of purpose will contribute greatly to the chances of the group completing the walk/paddle together, and in good spirits. For this purpose a group of artists will be creating a number of larger-than-life colourful puppets to be the artistic and visual leaders of the group. The puppets will be made under the guidance of experienced puppeteer, Kristi White. We will create the puppets in the lead-up to the event with artistic input from the community. The puppets will embody themes of nature, water and sustainability. Standing well above the crowd, these puppets will be impressive mobile art creations, with vibrant colouring and some moveable parts. They will have internal bracing to allow them to be carried for a long period of time. The puppets will act as cheer-leading mascots, they will be visual anchors for cyclists and pedestrians lagging behind and for paddlers on the water. In addition they will attract the attention of the general public inviting them to take interest and join the procession.