May Colgan
This month's installment of our Community Spotlight series features May Colgan. May is a longtime Beam Camper and a high school senior at Friends Select in Philadelphia, PA. May is preparing to attend college during Spring 2023 and says that she is interested in studying environmental science, engineering, and design.
May started coming to Beam Camp in 2016 and just celebrated her last year with us as a camper in 2022. She is a maker, reader, and science enthusiast with a passion for building campfires and making people answer ridiculous icebreaker questions. May said Beam Camp was her favorite place to go to since she was eleven and continues to be her favorite to this day. She continued on to say, "I started as a little kid who loved to spend all day making clothes in the art barn, and then later I would beg the project team to let me spend every possible minute working on projects. At camp, I would be doing something every second of the day, and it felt great.” Embracing camp’s essence as a quirky, fun, creative place, May holds the record for most pajama pants made in a session at Beam Camp.
When asked why she continued to go to Beam Camp for the last seven years, May says, “It was always this magical place where anyone could be whoever they wanted to be, at that moment. I always loved that there were different people there from year to year. Beam Camp was a place where adults trusted you to do dangerous things safely, and it was a slice of independence I'd never felt before.” She added that Beam Camp is a big part of her life where she made friends that are now “like family” to her.
In 2021, May joined the Fellows at Beam Camp. Through the Fellows Program at Beam Camp, campers 15 and up are trained to play an integral role in the realization of the big project being built at camp. They’ll go deeper into the management and building skills required to make the project, and if they earn them, leadership roles on the Project Teams. As a Fellow, May helped staff plan what some day would look like for other campers, including guiding them through specific project-related tasks, facilitating smaller scale work, and designing theme days full of games, skits, and fun.
Speaking about the impact Beam Camp had on her, May says “I became a lot more confident in myself. And extroverted, I think, because there were so many places at Beam where I could be loud and theatrical that felt low-stakes. And of course, I learned how to make so many things, and I took a lot of inspiration from staff who made art that was just so beyond what I thought art was. I'm applying to college now and finishing up my portfolio, and I see a lot of Beam influence, especially in larger-scale work. Beam has helped me think of myself as an artist, and that's really affected my thinking about what I want to do in college and beyond.”
May finds Beam Camp “magical” and a place where she can be herself without any worry, and that makes Beam Camp special for her. She also said that she thinks Beam Camp is special because “it is about empowering people through building things. For a lot of people, camp isn't about the time you spend working on the main project, it's about the time you spend working on performances or independent projects, but it's all in the same spirit. You are always learning from everyone, regardless of age, because we respect that each person is bringing something interesting. Beam celebrates weirdness and kids and community.”
May’s favorite moment at Beam Camp was when she participated in a Domain called Site-Specific Play, where they constructed a narrative that used a lot of Beam Camp lore and took place at a former project site. Domains at Beam Camp include in-depth, hands-on, discovery activities in the arts, performance, sciences, athletic, or cultural fields (or mash-up of several fields). In the first and second weeks of camp, Beam Campers choose to explore a new Domain, exploring disciplines, techniques, or projects in small groups. Speaking about her experience while creating the play with her group, May says, “Even though I was one of 4 people performing an original play, I had no fear. I remember this really beautiful image of half of the camp standing in this little rock crevice lit up by prop lanterns watching us perform.”
Beam Center is so grateful that May joined the Beam community back in 2016, and we’re excited to see what she does next. Thank you for being part of Beam, May!
