Fine Arts Summer Camp to grow bigger next year

Jul. 19—DANVILLE — Camp co-directors Adam Owens and Brian Klett are proud of the first Danville District 118 Fine Arts Summer Camp they organized in which 230 kindergarten through sixth-grade students attended last week at North Ridge Middle School.

Owens is a music specialist at Meade Park Elementary School and Klett is a band teacher at North Ridge Middle School. They both came up with the idea for the camp.

The idea started when Owens wanted to have a summer camp for Meade Park students. While talking with Klett about the idea, he thought about including the whole school district.

The "More To Life"-themed camp was a five-day celebration of music, art, drama, dance and being together.

"Our goal is to introduce our campers to the many ways the fine arts enhance the experiences of life. The fine arts are an integral part of life that is attainable by everyone and should be well cared for through collaboration and self-discovery," according to their website for the camp.

Students had art classes, music classes, social emotional learning lessons, movement activities and counselor-lead activities. Guest artists did some type of performance at the beginning of each day. There were also band, choir, orchestra and drama class choices for the older students.

Owens said students up to fourth grade had a set schedule of activities. Everybody had art. There were 30-minute rotations for the younger students, and the older students had some hour-long activities for those they chose.

There were really two camps going on at once, Klett said.

"We wanted to give the older kids a little more time because they are doing less activities. They're having more time, in say like band or orchestra," he said.

Guest artists also doing performances and demonstrations included singer Christian Cunningham, a D118 employee and winner of "The Voice-Kids Edition" in 2012; D118 school board president Randal Ashton, playing with his band Doc Ashton and the Root Canals; and a couple artists, Mari Martin and Tim Welch.

The guest artists were in addition to D118 employees and around 16 Danville High School students serving as camp counselors. Klett also teaches jazz band at DHS. Many of the high school counselors are with the jazz band.

"They're just good kids and they want to help," Klett said.

The free camp ran from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day, with breakfast and lunch served. Transportation also was available.

"We wanted to expose the kids to different forms of fine arts. So, we tried to get some instrumental, some vocal and we had some art involved ...," Klett said.

There were opening ceremonies for the camp, and the last day, parents saw an "informance performance" of what the students did during camp.

Some of the projects included chalk art, working with clay, painting, life rings of paper rings made into a chain of positive messages for SEL, soap carving, exploring where they can find music, learning a song in four languages and making instruments.

"We try to make it fun and exciting, nothing like school," Owens said.

Klett said he thinks one of the best stories was when one of the girls came up to him and said, "I think I'm just going to duct tape myself to the wall so I can never leave."

Owens also had a lot of comments from the students about how much they loved the camp.

In the gym one morning, students were playing a game of soccer and a game of freeze tag, for movement.

In a classroom, camper Bailey Comstock, 11, painted a picture of Olaf the snowman from Disney's "Frozen," and Genesis Loewenstein, 12, painted a Minion.

They said they'd had a lot of fun during the week with carving soap and making things with clay.

The camp was capped at 230 students due to how many students North Ridge's cafetorium can hold. There was still a wait list of about 50 to 70 more students.

This year was a learning experience, and Klett said they're already talking about having two weeks of camp next year.

"And we'll split the grades up a little bit so we can have more kids," he added, so they could double the attendees and go to 460 students.