The true colors of the Columbus Arts Council shine through its annual Summer Arts Academy program for children. There, imaginations come to life as campers create their own world with nothing more than a crayon and a blank sheet of paper.
Originally started in 2014, the academy is open to children ages 5-16 who have an interest in the arts. The camp offers four separate sessions, all spaced one week apart, at a flat rate of $99 per week. Campers arrive at 8 a.m. m. and they leave at noon from Monday to Friday.
Salem Gibson
Since its inception, the camp has been reformatted twice: once in 2019 and again this year, this time under the direction of Director of Operations Salem Gibson. The camp teaches children about music, drawing, painting and more with the intention of bringing a love of art and creativity to the youth of Colón.
“Our importance is that we continue to follow, teach and educate the culture and art in our community,” Gibson said. “Those are our building blocks and what better way than to start with the youth.”
Each week, the Summer Arts Academy offers 25 children the opportunity to experiment with the theme of that week’s program. Week one is devoted to music, week two to drawing, week three to music, and the final week is devoted to painting.
“Each year, we just try to tweak everything we notice we can improve to make sure we can have the highest quality camp they can provide,” he said.
During camp, kids not only spend their days drawing and painting, but also work through a pre-prepared curriculum in which they study color theory, shading and composition, names of established artists, and more.
“Every week they do a different study, so the first week was music and this week it’s visual. We’ll get into one where we’ll focus on sculpting and painting,” Gibson said. “I think it’s important for people to know that we’re not a childcare service. We are a real camp that is teaching these kids real things about art.”
A guitar painted by the children of the Summer Arts Academy Program is at the Columbus Council on the Arts. Campers work together each week to make a collective piece of art that is raffled off to the public on the Arts Council Instagram. Caroline Beach/Dispatch Staff
Along with the curriculum and arts and crafts activities, children work together each week to create a collective piece of art under a given theme and guideline. Last week, the children painted faces on a guitar; each child painted a specific type of emotion to express how they felt. Once the artwork is complete, it is raffled off on the Arts Council’s Instagram and awarded to a randomly chosen winner.
