Art Camp is being adopted by Friends Camp!
Art Camp will soon be a program under the care of Friends Camp, the Quaker summer camp which until now has hosted it as a rental group. It will continue to be coordinated by Maggie Nelson, with support from Friends Camp director Anna Hopkins.
Why? This move will provide much-needed financial and organizational stability to Art Camp, as well as bolster program content for Friends Camp's off-season offerings. It will honor the mission of Art Camp, originally inspired by Friends Camp, as a space for building community based in Quaker values and summer camp magic. It will also assist Friends Camp in its work to provide enriching and transformational experiences with Quaker community as a integral ministry of its parent organization, New England Yearly Meeting.
What will change? The culture, mission, and programming elements of Art Camp will all remain the same, and at its heart it will continue to belong to the artists that make up the Art Camp community. Not much will change about what it's like to come to Art Camp- in fact, a few things will get easier.
In this period of transition, we have made the decision to lay down Art Camp's 3-week residency program. It was a difficult decision made by Art Camp and Friends Camp mutually, as the weekend gathering has picked up steam, and the longer residency has proved to be a difficult program to sustain. We hope that by focusing on the life that Art Camp has to give through the weekend gathering, we'll be serving its mission better than if we split our energies between both programs. We remain grateful to the committed resident artists who have lived and worked at camp over the last four years-- everyone has contributed to making Art Camp what it is today!
Why? This move will provide much-needed financial and organizational stability to Art Camp, as well as bolster program content for Friends Camp's off-season offerings. It will honor the mission of Art Camp, originally inspired by Friends Camp, as a space for building community based in Quaker values and summer camp magic. It will also assist Friends Camp in its work to provide enriching and transformational experiences with Quaker community as a integral ministry of its parent organization, New England Yearly Meeting.
What will change? The culture, mission, and programming elements of Art Camp will all remain the same, and at its heart it will continue to belong to the artists that make up the Art Camp community. Not much will change about what it's like to come to Art Camp- in fact, a few things will get easier.
- Signing up and paying fees will become more seamless with the use of Campminder as a registration platform, where participants will also be able to download useful forms and informational documents.
- By sharing a budget with Friends Camp, Art Camp will save on food and material costs so that more money can be put towards financial aid to send more participants to Art Camp and continue Art Camp's commitment to be affordable for all.
- The most important change will be Art Camp's move towards sustainability as a program to ensure many more artists in the future benefit from the experience, and with support from Friends Camp, the community will continue to grow bigger every year!
In this period of transition, we have made the decision to lay down Art Camp's 3-week residency program. It was a difficult decision made by Art Camp and Friends Camp mutually, as the weekend gathering has picked up steam, and the longer residency has proved to be a difficult program to sustain. We hope that by focusing on the life that Art Camp has to give through the weekend gathering, we'll be serving its mission better than if we split our energies between both programs. We remain grateful to the committed resident artists who have lived and worked at camp over the last four years-- everyone has contributed to making Art Camp what it is today!