Camp Zeum from the inside...

This summer I got to work with two camps AND help with the film festival. The first camp I did was Little Voices I. with educator Fran. Little Voices camp This camp's theme was puppets. We made many puppets like sock, bag, string, stick and shadow. We had a guest speaker come in and talk about the history of shadow puppets and showed us how to tell a story with shadow puppets.

The next camp I did Shout Out! with educator Irina. For this camp we learned about ourselves, different communities and communities around the world. We did blogs, podcast and short films. This camp was made up with kids ages 11-13. We interviewed different issues relating to the 3 topics of out camp. For ourselves we interviewed Nick from BayCat. For our community, we interviewed London Breed from African American Cultural Center in the Filmore. She talked about how she is trying to make change for kids in that community so that they aren't wandering the streets getting into trouble. The last people we interviewed were Katina and Victoria. They talked about world issues and helped us realize other people's perspective and we should keep an open mind about people around us not just ourselves or our community.

After working on the two camps, Irina, the camp coordinator asked me to help her with the Zeum's first annual film festival. I was totally shocked she asked me to help because she could've asked anyone else. I spent 2 days editing the podcast and films for Shout Out! camp. That was really long time to edit and more than I wanted in the beginning but once I started editing the stuff, I really got into it. I wish I could've done more editing.

For Fran's camp, at first the kids gave me a headache. I think i thought that because I am not use to working with the same group of kids for a week straight because otherwise i work with different people all moments of the day. Once i got to know them one on one though, it was alot better. They were respectful, adorable and sad that camp was ending when the week was over. The kids were amazing.

Working on camps was fun. I got to many things i never thought was possible for me since I'm usually working on the floor. Camp was tiring since I am not use to waking up at 6:45 to get ready to be at 8:30AM. Usually I wake up at 8:00AM to get ready to be at work before 10AM. Waking up early for a week straight was worth it though since i grew to love the campers. My favorite memory was when I learned new things like, for example, going in depth with Imovie and garage band and the history of shadow puppets! Once the camps were over, I was sad because even though camps were only a week, I grew attached to the kids!