2013 Beam Camp Project

Summer Youth Program Seeks Proposals for Spectacular Projects
Worldwide call seeks ideas from Engineers, Architects, Designers, Sculptors, Builders, Agriculturists, Videographers, Technologists, Artists and Makers of all kinds

Past Project Images: http://flic.kr/s/aHsj5LFz65
Proposal Submission Info and Form: http://www.beamcamp.com/project-proposal/

Beam Camp, the summer camp for the fine and manual arts, technology and collaboration, today opens its annual international search to find its 2013 Beam Projects. The large-scale collaborative projects are realized by Beam campers, aged 7-17, and staff at the camp’s 106-acre facility in Strafford, New Hampshire.

Projects are budgeted at $10,000. Winning designers receive a $2,500 honorarium and are invited to visit camp during the project’s production.

Proposals can be submitted on the Beam Camp website until Friday, January 11, 2013 with Semi-finalists announced on January 18, 2013. (submission page: http://www.beamcamp.com/project-proposal/).

Beam offers these prompts for proposals:

• Project should be big and ambitious and result in a unique and spectacular product.
• Project Master should have experience in executing the kind of idea proposed.
• Projects should take advantage of Beam’s outdoor space and rural location, but need not be about camp, children or nature.

Beam Camp Co-Director Danny Kahn says of the Project, “it’s a chance for kids to walk around inside the mind of a designer of big things and systems.  The kids get to learn project-specific making skills and practice the tools of collaboration, and more importantly see how to bring to life a passionately held and expertly developed idea.”

The Beam Projects for summer 2012 reflected Beam’s core emphasis on cultivating creative thinking and applied collaborative work. In “Creature Quake,” Beam Project 2012.1, landscape architects Rachel Kunreuther and Douglas Stookey’s proposal, Beam campers and staff constructed enormous creatures in earth, sky and lake. In “Navigating Dreams,” Beam Project 2012.2, proposed by Matthew Springett Associates, Beam campers and staff created a night sky of LED constellations controlled and navigated by a boat-machine.

Previous winners include Caitlin Berrigan’s “Macro/Micro Domes,” Steve Gerberich and Nathaniel Lieb’s “Beam Fleet,” Jan Drojarski and Jon Bocksel’s “Jungletopia,” Christine Baumgartner and Manuel Kretzer’s “Float With The Flowers,” the solar-powered film “A Trip to the Sun” by Daniela Kostova and Mike DeSeve, WIgnall & Moore’s “The Stories of Machines That Never Flew” and “The Habitats of Parker Mountain” by pragmatopia and architecture students of the University of Kassel, Germany.

ABOUT BEAM CAMP  Beam Camp offers two 4 week summer sessions for kids aged 7-17 in Strafford, New Hampshire. Campers cultivate hands-on skills while exploring innovative thinking, design and the creative process. They swim, hike, play games and enjoy 750 acres of mountain, forests and lakes, while transforming ideas into artifacts and personal achievement into community success.