From the French Quarter to outer space: The intergalactic emotional intelligence of Clay Achee’s ‘Ziggy’s Arts Adventure’ on LPB

A shudder ripples through the humid Louisiana night air. Two teenagers stargazing on a hill overlooking a junkyard sit up and point excitedly at the sky.

“It’s a shooting star!”

“No, it’s a meteor!”

A ball of light streaks down low and whooshes past the kids, blowing wind through their hair. The flash disappears behind a pile of junkyard tires and a soft skidding sound filters out, like pouring sand from a cup. An airlock hisses and discarded cans roll and clink in the soft air.

Ziggy the nine-year-old alien has just crash-landed on earth. His quest? To learn about artistic expression.

Just miles away at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres, a puppet in tie-dye pants plays an electric guitar for the passersby, belting out “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. Or more accurately, a puppet in tie-dye pants plays an electric guitar from the lap of puppeteer Clay Achee for the onlookers strolling the French Quarter.

One of these scenarios is fictional and one is a recurring event, but both of them speak to the power that drives Ziggy’s Arts Adventure on Louisiana Public Broadcasting:

The value of self-expression.

Ziggy’s Arts Adventure is an educational series for K-5 on LPB that teaches the integral “soft” concepts of art education, social skills, and emotional intelligence through an arc of nine ten-minute episodes featuring The Junkyard Band, the group of Muppet-like musicians Ziggy meets in the junkyard when he crash-lands on Earth. Ziggy’s inception was inspired by the 1977 launch of the Voyager I space probe, which carried a golden record with Earth’s first intergalactic playlist into space. The probe has been in interstellar space for 45 years and any wandering cosmic travelers can still pass by and hear the sounds of Earth.

Clay Achee is a Baton Rouge native, a self-taught puppeteer, and the heart and soul behind the creation of Ziggy’s story:

One of those records (on Voyager I) had Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” on it. The idea of little green aliens Jump, Jive an’ Wailin’ to “Johnny B. Goode” makes my heart happy. That was the initial seed for it – this is the alien who found the Voyager and he came back to Earth looking for Chuck Berry.

Clay’s career path directly reflects a driving theme of identity that Ziggy feels in the show: the desire to explore a new form of expression, possibly be extremely bad at it, and keep doing it simply because it feels good and it helps you connect with yourself and others. Clay started building puppets as a hobby when he was 30 as an outlet to do something creative with his hands. Those initial puppets, which took weeks to build and were completely non-functional, he gave as gifts to friends. Then he kept working at the craft.

He progressed to street performing in the French Quarter. He’d take a puppet and busk for hours, working things out. From there he graduated to live performance and climbing up on stage with a puppet. He still actively attends karaoke nights as a laboratory for himself to hone his craft and learn new things:

It’s been so important to me to work with the puppets in low-stakes environments. I continue to do that. I continue to street perform and do karaoke because it’s an opportunity for me to try things in an arena where stakes are low. “Can he jump off a piano?!” I don’t know, but I can try that at karaoke and nobody is gonna kill me (laughing).

Clay’s arena as a performer grew and he built the characters for Ziggy and The Junkyard Band. This became the Ziggy and the Junkyard Band Youtube channel. His Youtube videos grew into a relationship with LPB and the birth of a show that could help children learn how to express their individuality in a social group setting with peers.

(Elizabeth) Foos and I, who’s my educational consultant and writing partner for the series, we realized that this series was very well built to teach emotional intelligence. Educators call it “soft skills”: learning to share, learning to apologize, learning to accept an apology – all of these sort of things that are emotional intelligence skills that we learn as kids that are really easy to teach because they’re all wrapped into narrative.

While Clay built the story elements and characterization, Elizabeth Foos helped as the primary facilitator in integrating the series with the necessary educational elements. She merged her expertise in creative programming into Ziggy’s learning experience, which includes fundamental art education topics, but also how art helps us communicate what we feel inside to the outside world. Clay spoke about integrating emotional intelligence:

What’s interesting with Ziggy’s experience is that Ziggy’s home planet – they are emotionally telepathic. It’s what his little antenna is for – but his is broken. So on his planet, they never developed the Arts because they’re emotionally telepathic. The reason that we “art” is to share what’s inside of us to the outside, and they (Ziggy’s family) don’t need that. Ziggy, because his antenna was broken, he did need that. When he heard music for the first time, it mattered to him. He needed to know where these self-expression tools were. So when he goes to Earth looking for Chuck Berry, it’s not just because rock n’ roll moved him, it’s because he has an active need of these tools.

Clay’s transition from performing as a hobby to overseeing an entire production team as a director and educator in children’s programming was a gradual growth over years. There was no immediate payoff. It was learning the craft, getting rejected for ideas, and with patience, an eventual bursting through into a space where Ziggy’s Arts Adventure is now prominent enough that it was aired on Thanksgiving before A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving last year.

Doing it poorly for a while is the key to any art form, you know? The guy who did Peanuts, Chuck, said you have 10,000 bad drawings in you – might as well start getting them all out now. So you’ve got a bunch of bad puppets in you, you might as well start making them. When I was making them, it was absolutely for fun. I wanted to see if I could do it – I love Jim Henson stuff – why not? Now that it’s become such a part of my identity and my art form, it’s been really nice having them there (the first puppets he built) to remind me that I sucked at this.”

Ziggy’s Arts Adventure is entertaining and informative for the K-5 realm, but really transcends demographic. The series addresses highly specific art topics such as balance, contrast, and proportion. All nine episodes are available now to stream directly through the Ziggy’s Arts Adventure Youtube channel.

The learning lessons for children? They get to hang out with a curious alien and a groovy band and learn life skills through narrative. The lesson for adults?

No matter what your age, you don’t have to crash-land in a Louisiana junkyard to find self-expression.

Sometimes it means simply setting up a chair at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres Street and working it out.

Fable House is a video production company based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that specializes in production for film, video, commercials, and TV. Our team are experts in physical production, post-production, and VFX. We produce content for major brands, TV networks like Syfy and Lifetime, and provide production services to Louisiana’s never-say-die indie filmmakers.