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Summer Camps

At Beam Center we believe that a summer camp experience can change a young person’s life.

While at Beam Camp or Beam Camp City, amidst the magnificence and scale of the natural world, young people collaborate with adults and are liberated to consider identities, relationships, and future possibilities beyond those available to them at their school, home, or neighborhood.

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Beam Camp

Beam Camp is an iterative experiment in community, collaboration, and exploration located in Strafford, NH. Embracing radical trust and generative failure since its opening in 2005, Beam Camp is a specialized summer camp focused on project making. We engage campers and staff to realize the potential of each individual and the collective.

Our award-winning program offers youth ages 11-17 the opportunity to cultivate hands-on skills while exploring innovative thinking, design, problem solving, and the creative process in a supportive and ambitious learning environment. Each session, campers and staff build projects at a variety of scales, ranging from smaller individual creations to a spectacular large-scale project imagined by designers from around the world.

Following the opening of Beam Center in 2012, Beam Camp invited youth from Beam’s NYC-based programs and partnerships to come to camp, including from our Project Fellows program, our partner schools, and local community based organizations. As of 2022, Beam Camp has hosted more than 1,000 campers, providing full and partial scholarships to more than 400.

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Beam Camp City

Beam Camp City brings our commitment to collaboration, youth empowerment, and big-as-all-outdoors projects to Governors Island in NYC. Centered on a belief that NYC children and youth deserve a summer of play, creation, and celebration, Beam Camp City provides free summer programming to groups from our partner public schools and community based organizations. Guided by NYC high schoolers and young adults from Beam Center’s Youth Employment programs, campers collaborate to build one of Beam’s Big Projects and experience all of the best aspects of the summer camp experience.

  • Beam Camper outside in front of project with her hands in the air

    —Shala, Beam Camp camper, 2022

    Beam Camp is a very fun place where you get to be yourself, and you don’t have to hide your feelings and can be very open. And everybody here loves you no matter how different you are…My time at Beam has really changed my point of view of life. I feel more myself and more that I can share myself with others and not really be in a box, which is really good for me.

  • Beam Camp Production team member ironing a banner on a counter

    —Lombe, Project Production team at Beam Camp City, Summer 2022

    You have all these bunch of people that you don’t know, but the things you’re doing and activities that you’re participating in just brings you guys together and makes you feel good. It’s a whole different vibe. You step on the island, and it’s like - boom! I’m here, I’m ready, I’m about to have fun…It’s an amazing feeling.

  • Beam Camper standing outside in front of a body of water

    —May, Beam Camp camper, 2016-2022

    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.

  • Beam Camp counselor standing outside in front of a lawn

    —Elizabeth, Counselor at Beam Camp City, Summer 2021

    Beam has definitely taught me so much about myself and what it means to be a creative, in the adjective and noun sense. I’ve been provided with many opportunities to learn more about different ways to create and taught how to express myself, whether it’s through my art or with words. I’ve definitely grown a little emotionally thanks to Beam.

  • Beam Camper standing outside holding a red soda can

    —Jaz, Beam Camp camper, 2014-2022

    I don’t think I can imagine my life without Beam. I’ve been going for - at this point - more years than I haven’t been...it’s been a constant in my life. I really like being here, I really like this place, and I really like all the projects we do. The kind of people that come here make me happy, and I really like them — the community makes Beam, Beam.