Domains are hands on activities in the arts, performance, science or athletic fields (or a mash up of several fields!) that explore disciplines, techniques or projects in small groups. They are taught by visiting Domain Guests who live at camp with us for one week and teach two different workshop subjects or activities, we call them Domain A and Domain B.
Domain Guests may use camp facilities and equipment while they are not leading a domain to pursue their own small projects and contribute to the creative community at camp.
Domain workshops are 75 minutes long and meet on three alternating days in the afternoon. Each domain has about 12 campers aged 9-17.
About Us
At Beam Camp, youth aged 9-17 and staff learn to make their ideas a reality. Through fine and manual arts, technology, and collaboration, Beam Campers cultivate hands-on skills while exploring innovative thinking, design, and the creative process. We have a fully equipped woodshop, metal shop, fabrication lab, and an arts and craft barn ready for ceramics, sewing, painting and more. Campers spend a good portion of their day in those shops and making their own self-designed projects known as Independent Work projects. At both our two-week and four-week camp sessions, we also invite practicing artists to lead workshops that we call Domains, during which they share their artistic practices, trades, and hobbies with campers.
In addition to Independent Work and Domains, each session we build something that has never been built before. Campers and staff collaborate on our Big Project, which we commission through an annual international call for proposals. A team of Beam staff, former Campers, and community members chose a unique, large-scale project from the dozens of ideas submitted each year by architects, artists, and big thinkers from all over the world. The Big Project is one of the few elements of camp in which every camper has a stake, and we share in the responsibility and the pride and joy of completing it each summer.
