Camp Innovation

For every time someone has said, “There’s got to be a better way,” someone else has said, “I’ve got an idea…” 

With that tirelessly optimistic perspective, we’ll be featuring new ideas on this blog for most of the foreseeable future. 

We became aware of this first one from a mailer we received in the US mail (those paper things that get delivered to your door). It’s a brochure for Steve and Kate’s Camps, a series of new summer camps with locations in California, Illinois, and Washington.

From the looks of it, a parent (Steve?  Kate?) got plumb tuckered out by his or her kids complaining about camp and decided to invent a better one. 

Steve and Kate’s camp gives kids the ability to…well…just about anything.  It’s proof that ideas can swing from trees, pop up online, and be the icing on the cake.  Literally.  As it says in their little brochure:

“Instead of a rigid structure, we give our campers choice. Instead of teaching kids the typical way, we give them tools and gentle guidance to help them become autodidacts.” (Yes, I had to look up autodidacts; it means a self-taught person.  I hope Steve and Kate use smaller words with their campers).  

While I’m all for kids staking out their own independence, I also hoped to find cool-as-heck activities.  No disappointment here.

They do all the usual stuff like soccer and tennis, but they also have filmmaking and six specialty studios with activities from animation to style to food (actually, they call it culinary, furthering their penchant for multisyllabic words), plus amazing stage shows with violin prodigies and Cheetahs.

Not at the same time, I hope.

They claim 480,090,240 ways for kids to design a day at their camp.  Whether that’s true or the product of a marketing department that likes big words and big numbers, their approach alone is different.  It solves a problem in a highly creative, and productive way.

And the world could certainly use some more autodidacts.