I spoke with Nicole Fougere from artsPlace about their summer camp offerings and what they’ve been up to recently.

 

Rob: How are things going at artsPlace right now? I know you’ve done a lot of adapting over the last few months.

Nicole: We transitioned really quickly to online programs. Then when the new information came out about camps, we just determined with the whole team that we could follow the guidelines from AHS for in-person summer camps. That too has been quite a big transition.

Rob: What kinds of measures are you putting in place to make sure that public health requirements are met?

Nicole: We are going to have small cohorts of under eight participants, dedicated staff and artists to work with them. We do have space for each cohort of students to have their own dedicated entrance, their own dedicated washroom and their own dedicated workspace.

Rob: So tell us about some of these summer camps.

Nicole: We’re working with a lot of the same themes we were using before. I like a summer camp theme. I think it gives some creative focus to the week. Every single week we do a number of arts disciplines. We’ve got the ceramics of the pottery. We’ve got painting, we’ve got drawing, we’ve got storytelling, we’ve got some movement.

Some of the things we’ve got going on – Ocean Devotion. That week we’ll put a little focus on watercolor painting and creating magical ocean creatures, and that one’s going to be a full day in-person camp. I’m excited about a camp called Riddles and Puzzles, and that’ll be a focus on creating scavenger hunts and art that shares a mystery, that sense of storytelling. That one will have an online camp in the morning and an afternoon in person camp. A camper could choose to join both, so they could stay home and join online if they wanted to and also come in the afternoon. We’re going to do different activities both times.

We’ve got other camps during the summer that are only afternoons and other campsthat are only online because we recognize that there’s a diversity of need in this community for summer programming. We tried to fill that with a diversity of offerings.

Rob: What are the age ranges you’re offering camps for here this summer?

Nicole: We have camps for children age 6 to 8, and camps for children age 9 to 12.

Rob: Registration opens for artsPlace members on Monday, June 8th, and on Wednesday, June 10th for the general public. In addition to these camps, you’re just releasing your second set of virtual concerts at artsPlace as well?

Nicole: I’m really excited that more musicians are going to get a chance to share their beautiful music with our Bow Valley community. We’ve also got a lot of community projects going on right now. We’ve worked with about six different community partners and a whole crew of volunteers to make 170 creative kits full of art supplies and games going to seniors across the whole Bow Valley. We’ve also got a concert series that we’re bringing to the Bow River Seniors Lodge. Now that outdoor gatherings can have up to 50 people, as long as people are socially distant, the lodge felt that they could accommodate that by having a lot of their residents come out onto the lawn. So artsPlace is organizing the tech and the artists, and we’ll be able to give these Bow Valley community members a really good experience. We know that it’s been a particularly difficult and vulnerable experience to be living in a lodge or home at this time.

Filed under: artsPlace, Canmore