An amazing week at Camp Quest UK!

Last week I had the privilege of spending my week at Camp Quest, the UK summer camp for free thinking kids (Ages 11-18: there is another camp for younger children!). Camp Quest originally started in the USA, as a secular alternative to typical American summer camps. Often traditional camps don’t cater to non religious children, and whilst this is less of a problem in the UK, the idea has been welcomed here too. In the UK it is more focused on promoting education and a desire to learn about the world around us, using reason and empathy when exploring some of life’s biggest questions and understanding other people’s points of view. Whilst it has been described by some sources as the “Richard Dawkins Atheist Indoctrination Camp” this in fact couldn’t be further from the truth. The camp welcomes children from all backgrounds, as its aims are relevant to all people (religious or not) as long as they have a desire to learn, be challenged and have fun!

I found out about the camp through the internet and saw they were looking for volunteers. I was lucky enough to be picked to be a leader at the summer camp and I am honestly so grateful. I had the best time last week and met THE MOST INCREDIBLE PEOPLE! Both the staff and campers were great and I had so much fun.

So what did we get up to? We were staying near Malvern, in an outdoor activity centre so each morning (after an optional early morning run/ yoga session and breakfast) the campers got to take part in physical activities put on by the centre. These included trying the zip wire, the king swing (a giant swing that starts at about 3m high up), the high ropes course, a Jacob’s ladder and quad pole and grass sledging. The kids were amazing, we had so many brave individuals confronting their fears and giving the activities a go. We (the leaders) even got to have a go too which was great! I’m not too afraid of heights so the activities were loads of fun, even if I fell off the high ropes course at one point when I was trying to be too clever and decided to try and walk part of it like a tightrope! (Note to self – a career as a tightrope walker is probably beyond you!) On one of the days we also ran a sports day, consisting of various team games as well as normal sports like football and rounders, completing the morning by allowing the leaders to have some fun with water pistols!

Me jumping out of a tree at a trapeze - the leap of faith!

The rest of the activities at camp were led entirely by our staff members. As it is a camp that aims to promote free thought and education, we ran sessions that would challenge the kids to think, on topics that wouldn’t necessarily be easy for them. It wasn’t until these sessions that I found out quite how incredible these kids were – they were all so intelligent and had such amazing ideas and ways of articulating their thoughts. They enjoyed sessions of philosophy for children (run by two of the leaders trained to run such sessions) covering topics such as free will; as well as other discussions where they were allowed to propose topics and choose which one to attend. We had some really fascinating discussions on whether or not sexism is a problem in today’s society, whether or not it is possible to be an ethical consumer, whether assisted dying is a good idea and whether or not we have a right to anonymity as well as many other topics. The level of maturity displayed was incredible and we had some brilliant responses.

We also had the opportunity to do some science! One of the other leaders is a chemistry teacher and so led some great practical sessions on chromatography and acids and alkalis which the kids loved! I helped run a session with another leader (a Physics and Maths graduate) on Physics (YAY!) – we covered the concepts of relativity and string theory. Obviously we didn’t go in to the maths (although a couple of very interested children asked me about that later on), instead focusing on the mind bending concepts and basically challenging the kids perceptions of our world. I also ran a session on fun, basic first aid (as I’m always shocked that first aid isn’t compulsory in schools) which was a good laugh as we encouraged dramatic collapsing/dying to make it more enjoyable whist learning some valuable skills. We also had a really good talk from another leader on the concept of brainwashing (and the fact that brainwashing itself isn’t necessarily a real phenomenon), as well as some talks led by the campers themselves (which were brilliant – covering Dark Matter, Great Apes and nonsense poems such as the Jabberwock) and by some external speakers (on the place of religion in schools, Murphy’s law and consent).

Other camp activities focussed on more creative endeavours such as drama (loads of fun and silly drama games that I’ll have to remember as they were brilliant fun and the kids loved them) and music, including a mini performance night as the campfire was rained off. There were some truly talented individuals – singers, instrumentalists, rappers, spoken word poets and dancing. We also really enjoyed doing some tie dying (leading to us all looking super cool in our tie dyed items!) and other crafts like origami.

As you can see, it was a week packed with fun and games and covering so many cool things. I’ve rather run out of space to pack in any more, but all I can say was it was the most incredible week and I’d love to do it again! :D