Kids Making Things Happen

All photos courtesy of Beam Camp

Floating Creatura

The title of today’s post is taken from the tagline of Beam Camp. Located in New Hampshire, the camp focuses on developing “capacity for craft, collaboration and compassion through practice of fine and manual arts, innovative thinking, design, creative process, story-telling, building and engineering.” At Beam Camp, staff members include professional architects, videographers, builders, engineers, designers, and creators. Campers have a unique opportunity to work alongside these creative professionals and develop their own creative skills. I first learned about this camp after reading an article featuring them on designboom.com.

Of their various projects shown on their website, I was most intrigued by the latest project, titled “Floating Creatura.” This project is a 20’-long, human-powered floating vessel. The vessel is propelled by a human-sized hamster wheel, bike pedals, and large metal paddles, and is entirely constructed by kids. This brings a whole new meaning to the idea of what kids can create at camp. Read the full article here.

Beam Camper Cabin

The camp’s program focuses on a variety of skills and activities that develop each child’s creative side. Located in New Hampshire on 100 acres of wooded forest, the facilities are also quite noteworthy. The camper village is constructed of nine wood-frame cabins, each with unique floor-to-ceiling screens -- a welcome break from the traditional camper cabin. While their highly-creative, camper-made projects catch the eye of design blogs, the camp also offers some of the more-traditional camp activities, such as swimming and canoeing. As both a design professional and camp enthusiast, it is exciting to see a camp combining the two interests to create a unique experience, helping to develop the next generation of creative thinkers.