Interdisciplinary Arts are our specialty— bringing together performance, design, crafting, music, and movement. These art forms aren’t easily categorized, so we brought them together in Oddball Arts.

Immersive Arts

The camp itself becomes a work of arts as young artists spending the week transforming the room into an immersive art experience. Campers will learn consider how to engage the five senses through their work, including:

• Transforming walls and other surfaces with fabric, foam, and other lightweight temporary materials.

• Creating a mood with lighting using color, direction, and focus

• Curate the scent of the space to match the experience.

• Choose a soundtrack to further the immersive experience.

• Offer a taste experience that considers safety and practical concerns .

This camp ends with a walk-though immersive experience curated by the campers during the last hour of camp on Friday.

Intermediate/ Advanced Puppet-Making

is for young artists ready to move beyond “sock” and “paper bag” puppets to something a little more durable and professional.

Campers build a hand-and-rod puppet from scratch, including:

• Building the internal structure from patterns with foam and hot glue

• Building the external appearance from patterns using fleece and hot glue

• Installing interchangeable arm rods and magnetic palm plates

• Designing and creating the puppet’s facial feaures using foam, fleece, fur, etc.

• Learn basic hand-and-rod puppet operation.

This camp ends with a Live Puppet Performance during the last hour of camp on Friday, during which the campers will practice their operation skills in a “panel of puppet experts” by having their puppets improvise answers to live audience questions.

• Creating a zine

• Outlining a comic strip or political cartoon

• Creating a short animatic or sketch comedy video

• Recording a vlog or blog

• Presenting a multi-media exploration of their artistic point of view.

Students are encouraged to create work that is silly, serious, bizarre, or beautiful— whatever they want the world to see!

This camp ends with a multi-media experience for family and friends during the last hour of camp on Friday.

• Learn to respectfully navigate artistic discourse around sensitive and/or controversial topics.

• Develop one or more original pieces for public performance.

• Learn how to choose and secure a safe, legal public performance space.

• Build a trust relationship between performer and audience in public spaces.

Performances will be held in and around The Idea Box along with cooperating local restaurants and retailers. The performances will take place during the last 90 minutes of camp on Friday.

If you have questions about how we handle discussions around sensitive subject matter and activist art-making, please contact us prior to registration.

Board Game Design

Roll the dice on a unique summer camp experience developing an original board and/or card game.

Using their own favorite board games as a jumping-off point, campers will collaborate to develop an all-camp board game, as well as spend some time each day on independent camp projects.

Campers will learn to:

• Identify and understand common game mechanics

• Create one or more games with clear rules and simple instructions.

• Design a game board and/or game cards for both aesthetics and playability.

• Choose and/or create game pieces for use in game play.

• Teach their game to new players

This camp ends with a “Game Night” party during the last two hours of camp on Friday.

Dice Boss
Dungeon Master Camp

is a week of character creation, dungeon design, and mechanics that create an awesome experience for your players. Campers will learn to:

• Create a world for their players to inhabit

• Devise challenges that are at the right level for players

• Improvise smoothly when players make unexpected choices

• Create unique and specific non-player-characters for encounters

• Bring their ideas to life with storytelling and mood-setting lighting, soundtracks, and even scents, snacks, and textures to make game play a “5-D” sensory experience.

This class culminates in a staged campaign (in the style of Critical Role) performed for a “live student audience” of family and friends. The performance will be held during the last hour of camp on Friday, and will be followed by a short reception celebrating the campers and their work.

• Play with everything from clay to wire to papier-mâché to cardboard

• Learn to create stable, sturdy creations that can be handled by the viewer.

• Build one or more multi-media creation(s) for their audience to explore

• Choose one or more interactive element(s) for their audience to experience.

• Install a gallery display of their work.

This camp ends with an interactive gallery walk for family and friends during the last hour of camp on Friday, and will be include a brief reception celebrating the artists.

Upcycled Arts

Why break it down when you can level it up? Campers turn old household items, recyclables, and commonly discarded objects into works of art. In addition to creating unique and beautiful artwork, campers will learn:

• To identify various reusable materials.

• Simple mending and repair techniques for an assortment of materials.

• Which tools are appropriate for working with which materials.

• Painting, decoupage, and other resurfacing techniques.

• How to use shapes to create stable versions of the sculptures they imagine.

  
  

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