A Summer of Creative Exploration
This summer, young artists across the Comox Valley spent their days painting with handmade brushes, making movies in the forest, building imagined worlds, and discovering that art can begin with a question just as easily as a paintbrush.
Our 2026 Summer Art Camps were built around curiosity, experimentation, and creative risk-taking. Rather than focusing on perfect finished pieces, campers were invited to explore new materials, follow unexpected ideas, and create work that reflected their own perspectives. Every camp had its own theme, but together they formed one joyful, art-filled summer.
Art in Relationship with the Land (Ages 8–10)
With teaching artist Elke, campers stepped outside the studio and into the forest, where sketchbooks became tools for observation and nature became both inspiration and collaborator. They created handmade paintbrushes from gathered natural materials, painted shadow-inspired murals, experimented with string painting, and spent time slowing down to notice the world around them.
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Art + Play (Ages 11–18)
With Natalia, creativity became an invitation to play. Campers filled sketchbooks with daily prompts, explored colour theory through playful experimentation, sculpted polymer clay creations, built personal 3D artworks celebrating the things that mattered most to them, and finished the week by creating vibrant tissue-paper installations that celebrated imagination and making without fear of getting it wrong.
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Seeing Differently (Ages 8–18)
Our Seeing Differently camps invited campers to look at the world from new perspectives.
With Avery, younger campers imagined life through the eyes of animals, created their own forest films, and brought clay creatures to life through stop-motion animation.
Meanwhile, Laurena encouraged older campers to experiment with layered materials and personal creative processes, creating mixed-media artworks that reflected how differently each artist approached the same creative challenge.
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Future Worlds (Ages 8–18)
We closed the summer by looking toward tomorrow.
Younger campers, led by Avery, created a collaborative dystopian film where friendship became the force that could save the world. They designed costumes from recycled materials, built miniature sets, developed characters and dialogue, and worked together to bring their imagined future to the screen.
Older campers, guided by Laurena, built entire worlds of their own. Through dioramas, terrariums, imagined creatures, futuristic architecture, and planets ruled by animals, they created layered narratives about the futures they wanted to invent and the stories those worlds would hold.
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More Than Art Projects
Looking back, what stands out most isn’t just the paintings, films, sculptures, and installations. It’s the confidence that grew alongside them.
Campers collaborated on big ideas, solved creative problems together, experimented with unfamiliar materials, and discovered that there are countless ways to make art. They learned that a forest can become a film set, a shadow can become a painting, and a handful of recycled materials can become the beginning of a whole new world.
A huge thank you goes to our incredible teaching artists Elke, Natalia, Avery, and Laurena, whose creativity and care shaped every week of camp. Thank you as well to all of the families who trusted us with their young artists this summer and to every camper who arrived ready to imagine, experiment, and create.
We couldn’t have asked for a better first season of CV/Arts Summer Art Camps.
Curious what next summer might look like? Stay tuned for 2027 Summer Art Camp registration.
