Intensively Creative Summer Camps for Tweens

Vancouver Summer Camps Last-Minute Options Place des Arts

Summer Camps at Place des Arts

Coquitlam’s Place des Arts offers great summer camps for kids aged five to fourteen. And while the classes for elementary school age children fill up quickly, there are some truly fabulous offerings for 12-14 year olds that still have space. The centre’s week-long Summer Fun! art intensives for youth allow students to create significant projects and more fully hone their art skills.

This year’s summer camps afford a lot of variety, with classes such as Writing the Zombie Apocalypse, Summer Voice Workshop, Stage Combat and Jewelry Design Basics (with Top 30 Vancouver Mom Blogger nominee Amanda Maxwell). Sessions last three hours, so students will be able to really get into the material, but they’ll also have time to get outside and enjoy their summer.

Developing Characters, Creating Masks

We had the chance to speak with Amy Feld, who is teaching Mask Creation & Exploration. Amy is new to Vancouver, as she just finished her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at Concordia University in Montreal. She says, “When I was in university I really tried to focus on physical theatre, masque, commedia dell’arte, all of those things. I’m taking all of the things I learned there, and creating this workshop for the summer.”

Students will spend the first day of class developing characters. Amy says she’ll be, “Testing their imagination and taking them on magical journeys inside of their own mind.” Once they’ve developed their characters, they’ll create the masks. “They’ll be plaster masks, and all sorts of characters, because kids’ imaginations are quite large. Then we’ll start to play with those masks and create stories to bring the masks into.” The class will focus around the students’ interests, wherever those lie. Amy adds, “I’m trying to create a space for students to clear away the confines of typical student-teacher settings … I’m also focusing on teamwork, because as an adult I realize that teamwork is very important.”

The Sky’s the Limit

We asked Amy what students would take from the class, and she said, “Theatre is so great at helping students to understand and to empathize with the world and the people around them. It gives them the ability to speak more clearly, to think more creatively and to engage with other people and peers. The sky’s the limit with theatre I think, you can always learn more and more!” It’s too bad that they don’t offer sessions for moms.

The summer camps at Place des Arts are filling up quickly. If you have a 12-14 year old who would like to get intensively creative this summer, check out the arts centre’s website for full registration details.