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A word about our children's art camps...

More than just childcare...

While we know our camps serve a childcare role for many parents, we have always understood ourselves to be more than that – an art school – offering children real added value for their time with us.  Art is often squeezed in the school curriculum and not always a practical or easy activity to do at home.
 
Our camps are aimed at children who want to spend more time on a piece of artwork than they might be able to do elsewhere.  Over the years we have found children love to draw and paint and fully invest themselves in their artwork meaning that they are very proud of what they have done when they have finished.
 
The process allows us to input in a number of ways that help children not only build their drawing and painting skills but also learn how to work through the process of building up a painting in stages.  The process requires them to engage their creativity, work at improving their piece and sometimes work through how they feel about how it’s going!  The confidence that this engenders is something they take with them wherever they go in the future.

Why 2-day camps?

Since the national ‘lockdowns’ of 2020-21 we have run most of our camps as 2-day camps (typically Mon & Tue and Wed & Thu with Fridays offered as a single-day camp).  We have done this for a number of reasons that we feel are more important that the slight loss of flexibility for parents looking to book just single days.
 
Firstly, there is a practical reason:  the 2-day format works really well for our projects.  On the first day we tackle a canvas painting using acrylic paints that takes time to dry before children can add the finishing touches that really complete their picture.  Allowing the painting to dry overnight means that children can not only finish it off first thing the next day but also take home a dry painting with them – something that can be tricky if the painting is still wet!
 
Secondly, we have found that children really enjoy returning for the second day.  By the end of the first day they are familiar with staff, the camp setting and have often made new friends who they want to see again.  They have usually enjoyed themselves and look forward to returning to tackle the watercolour painting and play with friends again.  Our staff also love getting to know the children a bit better and helping them with their projects and the 2-day camps are perfect for this.
 
The 2-day camps allow us to introduce children to two very different types of painting – acrylic painting on canvas and watercolour paints on paper.  The two days allow children to immerse themselves in art and fun with their friends that can feel a bit rushed on just a single day.

A word on our projects...

While we do occasionally run projects inspired by famous artists all our projects are our own creations.  We employ ‘real’ working artists to draw and paint our projects – often of imaginary scenes that appeal to children.  As well as aiming to inspire children’s creativity, our projects are carefully designed to allow children to build the drawing up and then paint it in manageable stages.  The cumulative effect of these stages is a painting far more complex that children would have typically been able to create on their own and serves to boost their confidence and understanding of what they can achieve.
 
Our projects are also designed to leave plenty of room for children to input their own ideas and while we require children to follow the main project, they are encouraged to add their own details in.  They may be asked to draw and paint a treehouse but this does not mean that their favourite pet, comic strip character or even a robot can’t feature in the scene!  The inbuilt flexibility of our projects also allows more capable (not necessarily older!) children to take the painting further than the basic remit.
 
We are constantly creating new projects of each of our camps but at the same time do repeat projects we have done before too.  We aim to ensure that projects are not repeated in the same camps in the year but some of our projects are very popular so we try to give as many children as possible the chance to do them.  Some children have attended our camps for many years and have enjoyed revisiting projects they did when they were younger to have another go.