Arts groups unite to provide online summer performance and filmmaking camps for kids

Now that Sonoma County’s coronavirus shelter-in-place order is halfway into its third month, arts organizations are becoming adept at replacing their normal programs and events with virtual substitutes. Some are even starting to go beyond that.

And kids can reap the benefits. How would most of them react to a chance to learn hip hop dancing, how to play the ukelele, even how to produce films of their own performances?

How about parents pressed to find something new to keep kids busy? Organizers hope they’ll leap at the opportunities.

With many traditional kids’ camps suspended, canceled or downsized, three organizations - the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, Transcendence Theatre Company in Sonoma and the Alexander Valley Film Society in Healdsburg - have teamed up to launch a collaborative online summer camp program running from June 22 through Aug. 7.

“For the last couple of years, I’ve wanted to get together of cohort of folks who are local arts education leaders, but other things got in the way,” said Ashleigh Worley, director of education and community engagement at Luther Burbank Center. “It took a pandemic to get us together. Early in shelter in place, we started asking what are we going to do about summer? There were those who were aware of the risks of trying to do anything in person.”

The result is a four-part program of filmmaking, dance and theater over the summer months.

The program will start with the weeklong Alexander Valley Film Society Filmmaking Bootcamp on June 22-26. Students will learn to capture footage of themselves and their families during the rest of the summer camps. Each class on Zoom has room for 15 students. Sign up at avfilmsociety.org/summer-film-camp

Next, they’ll move to the LBC Summer Arts Sampler Camp for hip hop dance, ukulele and singing for three weeks, from June 29 to July 17, while documenting their experiences for the filmmaking project.

Sign up at lutherburbankcenter.org/education/for-community/camps

“We’ll be taking a total of 135 kids over the three-week period, but no more than 15 kids in each class,” Worley said. “Three different virtual classes rotate through a block-type schedule each day, so we’re serving 45 kids each week.”

Third, students learn theater, improvisation, dance and movement from the Transcendence online camps for two weeks, from July 20 to 31. The company will accept 40 students for teen intensive classes and 90 for kids camp. Sign up at transcendencetheatre.org/virtual-kids-camp-2020

Finally, on Aug. 3-7, the virtual campers join the Alexander Valley Film Editing Bootcamp to put together their final footage from the summer. Each class on Zoom has room for 15 students.

A showcase of the student films will be announced later.

“We’ll have to see how everything works out, but we’ll set up a showcase for the finished films: a ‘What I Did for Summer Vacation’ show,” said Kathryn Hecht, founder and executive director of Alexander Valley Film Society.

Students are encouraged to mix and match camps or take them all. The camps are free, except for the Transcendence program, which costs $30-$70 for kids’ camps and $75-$350 for teen intensive training, with scholarships are available. All of the camps are for fifth grade and up, except for the Transcendence classes, which are for ages 7 to 18.

Hecht praised Worley and Burbank Center for leading the way to a collaborative virtual summer camps program.

“Asheleigh deserves the lion’s share of the credit,” Hecht said. “We realized our three organizations are already conducting arts education programs. We’re able to pivot in various ways to meet children’s needs during the pandemic.”

Nikko Kimzit, community engagement and education director for the Transcendence Theatre Company, has been part of the bi-weekly online planning sessions for the new coordinated virtual summer camps program.

“We wanted to see how we could form a partnership,” he said. “It seems like a natural fit. Now we’re being more direct in creating connection and community.”

Now that their planning has produced a plan for summer, organizers hope to do more joint projects in the future.

“We’re thrilled to make this happen,” said Worley. “This is truly the first time this kind of collaboration has been done. It’s something we should continue to do.”

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. Read his Arts blog at arts.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.