Children’s drama camp comes to town

By Melissa Piche Times Contributor

The Vault Cultural Collective, in cooperation with Strathmore Theatre Players’ Guild and Calgary Young People’s Theatre, are thrilled to be able to offer their inaugural children’s summer drama camp. 

Carolyn Steeves, board member of The Vault Cultural Collective, said that the board as a whole had been throwing around the idea of a way to give back to the community. 

“Anyhow we can give back to the community for everybody. We want to be the arts culture corner stone for Strathmore,” said Steeves.

The idea for the drama camp came about after some heavy brainstorming amongst the board members. 

“We noticed that in summer programming in the community there’s a lot of sports programming, there’s programming for vacation bible schools and that kind of thing through the churches,” she said. “There are things that happen at the rodeo grounds over the summer, but there wasn’t much happening culturally. So, we wanted to give students, children, the option of doing something culturally over the summer.”

Steeves said The Vault is a group of volunteers with a minimal budget, so giving back to the community in the form of programming for children had to be something with minimal overhead. 

“What could we do that would be not a huge cost?” she said.

The board explored additional arts programs, such as a music camp. However, the feasibility of such endeavors hinged on various factors, including the expenses associated with instrument rentals, securing a sufficient venue, and covering instructor fees. 

Unfortunately, going deeper into these considerations was not feasible, as the board’s primary objective was to ensure that the program remained both affordable and on par with other summer offerings in the community.

Having a group of diverse individuals on the board that have drama backgrounds was a key to the success of this program going forward. 

“We have a lot of expertise on our board – musicians and drama people and a lot of them are ex-teachers, so we have a lot experience working with children.” 

Steeves said they had thought about running the camp themselves, along with the Strathmore Theatre Players’ Guild, but ultimately decided on bringing in a group of experts. 

Upon reaching out to the Calgary Young Peoples Theatre about the prospect of hosting the camp, “they jumped at it.” Within a matter of days their drama camp dream went from a concept to, ‘it’s happening.’  

Steeves said they are extremely excited to be partnering with The Calgary Young People’s Theatre.  

“They are experts in summer camps; they’ve been doing it for over 30 years,” she said. “They do it all over Calgary – every quadrant.”

The students of the drama camp will work on skills in the morning, stage combat, improvisation and even stage make up. In the afternoons they will build and create their own play. 

“Exactly how they’re going to do that, that’s up to the Calgary Young People’s Theatre,” said Steeves. “By Friday afternoon at 3 o’clock, they will have a production ready which they will present to their parents.

“Knowing that you’re putting your child in a camp where there are experts, with people who are experts at doing this – they know how to deal with children. It will be good and we know that.” 

The camp is being held July 15-19 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a half hour break for lunch at the Strathmore United Church.

The deadline to register is May 15 at The Vault. The cost for the camp is $200 per child (ages 6-15) and space is limited.