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by Michael Thompson, Ph.D.
It was 4:00 p.m. on the last day of my teenage
son's first summer at a creative and performing
arts camp and he was totally involved in saying
good-bye to all of his friends. The final day
was a chance for parents to see their children's
artistic creations, but we three had accomplished
that task by lunch. Now, it was clear that there
was no role for either his mother or me in his
emotional departure. We needed to leave him alone
with his buddies to enact their farewells, the
last scene of summer camp. However, since we
had planned to stick around for the final musical
that night, we had to find some way to entertain
ourselves until 7:00 p.m. My wife, who had visited
and toured the grounds once before at midseason,
went to the car to read her book. I went for
a walk, trying to absorb the climate and culture
of this unusual place, a camp unlike any camp
I ever attended. I wanted to try to understand
what an arts camp does.
I strolled by the clown
workshop and the radio station, across to the
airy Batik studio, past the jewelry-making shed
and down to the leather-working and ceramic studios.
Eventually, I found myself drawn to the glass-blowing
area. What fascinated me, what drew me close
was, of course, the fire. Each of the three ovens
heat to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, and their doors
stand open so that their contents are accessible
to the glass blowers. The hot oven mouths allow
you to look directly into the white waves of
heat with their shimmering orange edges. The
sight is mesmerizing; so captivating, in fact,
that for a long while you don't think to
ask yourself the obvious question: They let kids
use these things?
I was surprised to find two
girls still there at work finishing off their
beautiful glass creations. From their ages — I
guessed seventeen — I imagined that they
were counselors-in-training or junior counselors.
They were hard at it, moving in a practiced ballet,
one girl holding the pole in the mouth of the
oven, twirling it steadily, then suddenly lifting
it out, swinging it around and placing it on
a set of rails where she rolled the steel pole
slowly with one hand while she molded the glass
with a tool she held in her other hand. Meanwhile,
her companion, who had been patiently waiting,
crouched down and blew into the open end of the
pole, forcing air up and into the center of the
slowly growing glass creation that her friend
was skillfully shaping.
Though I was standing
only ten feet away from these young women, they
were so absorbed in their glass-making that they
either did not notice me or they didn't
care. Chatting back and forth about how little
time they had left remaining, one of them said
with a voice filled with contempt, "Parents'
Day! It's so stupid. What a waste of time." I
took no offense. I understood why she said it.
Summer was over, camp was ending. Where in the
world was a high school girl going to have the
chance to do glass-blowing during the school
year. At her school? Not a chance. In her community?
I don't think so. For many campers like
this pair, a creative arts camp is the only place
they can go to pursue their passions, take risks,
and have the time to actually learn the craft
required to make art. Though it sounds obvious
to say it, arts camp may be the only place in
their lives where they are really trusted as
artists.
I don't consider myself an expert
on camp life, but when I think about the camps
I went to as a boy and the ones my two children
have attended or at which I have worked as a
consultant, I have probably known eighteen different
types of camps: all-around camps, day camps,
ocean-side YMCA camps, canoe-trip camps, boys'
camps, girls-only horseback riding camps, and
specialty tennis and soccer camps. However, it
wasn't
until my son, Will, began to get interested in
the arts that I ever thought seriously about
what goes into a creative arts camp. He has attended
two of them, one a day camp, the other a sleep-over
camp where he is now a counselor-in-training.
Though I may be generalizing beyond my data,
my experience is that arts camps really are different.
Different in the way they use time, in the amount
of autonomy given to campers, and in the relationship
between campers and counselors, and naturally,
in the nature of the children they attract. Arts
camps are trying to bring out the creativity
in children, and that is a delicate matter.
Before
I explore some of these differences, I should
note that sleep-away arts camps contain many
of the brilliant elements that make all camps
special places: an outdoor setting; dedicated
directors and enthusiastic counselors; children
away from their parents (hooray!); challenging
and fun activities; beloved traditions; bare-bones
communal living; smelly bathrooms; and lots of
singing.
However, when you visit the campus of
an arts camp, as I did on a return trip by myself
for a full day in June of 2008, the differences
are the first thing that hit you. There is the
striking absence of sports (they are occasional
and optional), and there is the intense focus
of the campers. Throughout the day you see children
in groups of two or three perched on rocks, sitting
at picnic tables or walking together. Some are
with counselors, others are in peer groups, and
many are alone. They hold books or instruments
or paper, they are talking intensely, or declaiming
the lines of a play; they're writing, or
playing the saxophone. In the computer lab they
are all hunched over laptops. A group of standing
boys lean together and try to hear one another
as they master the harmonies of an a cappella
number Everyone is trying to express themselves,
everyone is trying to reach inside to create
something: a piece of writing, a dance, the set
for a play, a stand-up comedy routine, or an
animated computer character.
Psychologists have
long tried to identify and predict who is creative
and under what circumstances that creativity
will emerge. Despite more than a century of research
it remains ineffable, a mystery. Who is creative?
How do you create the conditions for creativity
to emerge? Some great artists emerge from art
schools; others seem to appear from nowhere.
What is clear is that you cannot force art to
happen; you have to create an environment and
hope that it emerges. That's the challenge
for a creative arts camp. How do they meet that
challenge, and can they do it for every child?
Those were the questions that prompted my return
trip, and the answers emerged in observation
and conversations with campers, counselors, and
camp leaders. Mickey and Laura Morris, the directors
of Buck's Rock Creative and Performing
Arts Camps told me that they run, essentially,
an artists' colony for children . . . with
rules. The hallmarks of all arts camps are, they
believe, self-expression and self-reflection.
That means that children's interests drive
the agenda. Where some camps have a central program
with "electives" on the side, everything
at an arts camp is elective. There is no point
in forcing musicians to try jewelry-making. It
won't work. So, the mix of kids and their
interests determines what is popular and what
is offered. "No two summers are the same," Mickey
said. "Square dancing and ham radio have
all gone by the wayside." Now there is
a computer graphics lab where leather-working
used to be located; leather work has moved to
a smaller location. The expensive old printing
presses stand unused, sound design is now a growing
part of the theater program, and there is a new
culinary workshop. The forms of artistic expression
are constantly changing.
Laura says that if you
allow children to work in small groups and you
give them open-ended time to be together, "Something
unexpected happens." When it comes to adolescents,
that is exactly the thought that typically unnerves
parents. Adults don't want the unexpected
to happen, because they fear it will be "sex,
drugs, and rock and roll." So they — we — tend
to keep students in defined classes and periods,
like school. An arts camp has to trust children
to engage in spontaneous cross-disciplinary activities
that will result in a creative product. It may
be, Mickey says, that some children want art — "You
see how committed they are" — while
others could use more structure, but the camp
may not know that in advance. He sums it up, "It
is hard to separate the art from the freedom
of choice." Parents have to trust the camp
that bases its program on trusting children and
their choices.
In my group interview with campers
at Buck's Rock (Full disclosure: I took
my son's friends out for lunch), they were
very proud of how nonconformist and how noncompetitive
they were. Almost all of them had gone to other
camps before coming to an arts camp and had gotten
bored, become unhappy, or felt out of place.
Marlene, whose hair is dyed several different
colors, said, "I went to a sports camp.
It sucked." Then she attended another camp, "It
was run like a castle. Everything had to be perfect." A
band/orchestra camp also didn't work for
her. Her present experience is "Awesome,
awesome!" And why? "The best thing
about arts camps is that we're really accepted
here."
Daniel also recounts going to a
sports camp at nine which he describes as "overly
competitive." "My mom made me do
a ton of sports . . . I didn't want to
be in sports. The only sport I ever enjoyed was
baseball, but that was when I was little." Now,
even though he is a counselor-in-training at
the camp radio station he wants to, " .
. . learn guitar-making and I want to learn digital
mastering at Studio 59." Back home, he
says, "I love sculpture; I do short stories,
essays, and poetry." The enthusiasm for
what they love and their willingness to take
artistic risks poured out of this group of young
people. When I returned them to camp, I couldn't
resist walking down to watch the glass blowing
again. I fell into conversation with a junior
counselor named Sam. He, too, had first gone
to another kind of camp. "I went to a regular
camp in the Adirondacks. I didn't like
it, but I don't remember why. It was in the
woods; they had a lake. I loved going out on trips."
However, the regimentation bothered him. "I really
like that there is no schedule here and no competition,"
he told me. "Counselors work with everyone
at every level. You can go to any shop you want
to any time you want." I asked what had
drawn him to glass blowing. "Glass seemed
like a cool thing to do. I'm a little bit
pyro. I like playing with fire . . . I had relatives
who gave me blown glass balls when I was six."
I wasn't surprised by his answer. My son,
Will, is drawn to wood-working because of the
tools, saws, drills, and lathes. He likes being
trusted to work with dangerous equipment; he
also enjoys teaching younger children to use
them safely.
Two fourteen-year-old girls, Shane
and Maria, were sitting waiting for the 2:00
p.m. start of the afternoon work period. Maria
told me that she would do glass-blowing all day
if she could, but that the number of ovens naturally
limited the number of students. She chose to
simply watch others work with glass in the morning,
taking her turn after lunch. Later in the afternoon
she would take a singing lesson and would be
part of a drama rehearsal from 8:00-10:00 in
the evening. A lot of sitting early, a lot of
activity late — all her choice. It was
clear that she had found her camp.
As I was leaving,
I passed a group of three: two girls with an
Australian counselor. They all had guitars and
were strumming away, learning a Beatles song.
"Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner/but
he knew it wouldn't last."
They stopped and
their counselor, Bethany, checked on them, "How
are your fingers? Are they sore after so many
days of playing?" The girls looked at their
hands, shook their heads, and started again:
"Get back, get back/ Get back to where you
once belonged."
That just might be an arts camp.
Reference
Get Back.
(released 1969). Lyrics written by Paul McCartney,
The Beatles, Let It Be, © 1970 Apple Corp.,
Album.
Originally published
in the 2008 November/December issue of Camping
Magazine.
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