By: Kahra Buss, Executive Director, Perkins Center for the Arts
When we desire experiences for ourselves, or our children, we often seek out opportunities for engagement and active involvement. Perkins Center for the Arts is pleased to offer the Perkins Summer Camp that promotes this type of experience. With its more than three decade history, Perkins Summer Camp is a place for arts immersion where multiple mediums are explored, experienced and active creation is a process.
This summer, Perkins Summer Camp will offer four sessions of two-week intensives for students ages 5 to 15. “The Worlds Of Art: Beyond, Above, Below & Beneath” will offer budding artists the opportunity to explore and appreciate the natural and creative world that surrounds them. During each of the two week sessions, children will have the opportunity to work with teaching artists who will encourage their creative growth and development. Working across mediums, students will explore each creative format in a master class setting which will allow them to truly immerse in the art form that will culminate in a final Friday performance and gallery show.
In addition to the full day Summer Arts Camp for ages 5 to 11, Perkins’ Teen Arts Lab has been developed for students ages 12 to 14. These two-week intensives are for young people who are intensely focused on multimedia, arts collaboration and highly imaginative creation. Working in an intimate setting with their creative peers campers will explore and play to their creative strengths and construct projects under the guidance of experienced teaching artists.
Each of Perkins’ four sessions provides a nurturing environment that promotes creative problem solving and encourages independent thought development. By fostering this level of creativity, young artists are encouraged to appreciate and incorporate the natural world around them. Session I, “Beyond,” (June 24 to July 5) is focused on “Space Exploration.” Session II, “Above,” (July 8 to July 19) will explore “The Sky is the Limit.” During Session III, “Below” (July 22 to Aug. 2) campers will be “Down To Earth,” and Session IV “Beneath” (Aug. 5 to Aug. 16) will examine “Deep Sea Discovery.”
Using the natural world as the origin of their exploration, campers in the Summer Arts Camp & the Teen Arts Lab will work in pottery, textile, music and dance, painting, story-telling and sculpture. Perkins Summer Camp embraces STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) education by focusing on arts and environmental education as collaborative pieces that facilitate creative expression and scientific learning. Field trips that augment on-site learning and projects will be included in, and vary, each session to include the Edelman Planetarium at Rowan University and a performance at the Ritz Theater. Because each session is unique and varied, campers can attend more than one, or all four sessions without repeating projects.
Through Camp Hero, Perkins Scholarship Fund provides qualified and deserving students the opportunity to attend. Camp Hero, and the Perkins Scholarship Fund, is generously supported by individuals and corporations throughout the region who believe in the importance of the arts in a child’s development and growth. To learn more about scholarship opportunities, please contact Perkins Center and find out how to be a Camp Hero or how to apply for a scholarship. Visit Perkinsarts.org/learn/summer-arts-camp to find out more about how Perkins Summer Art Camp can enrich and expand a child’s summer experience!
