Earlier, I posted an article covering general day camps and multiple theme day camps around Kansas City.  Today, I’ll cover art camps.  This post will stick to the visual arts and I’ll cover the performing arts later on this week.

Kansas City is lucky to have world class museums and great local galleries as well.  The presence of the Kansas City Art Institute and Hallmark has blessed us with many, many artist-citizens in our midst.  The result of all of this good fortune?  Fantastic art camp offerings for kids this summer!

 Like I always say, get started by checking out your local parks and recreation catalog and then check these out!

• All Fired Up (Overland Park, KS) is a paint-your-own-pottery studio in downtown Overland Park.  They offer regular classes and workshops for individuals, groups and scout troops.  Check their website over the next few weeks to see what they’ve got planned for this summer!
• ARTichokes (Leawood, KS) is a great locally-owned art gallery that hosts ARTmania camps in the summer for kids ages 5-12.  As of March 24, 2008, the details of this summer’s program weren’t on the website - but check back.
• Artrageous Creative Studios (Prairie Village, KS) offers art camps for all ages.  The theme changes each week - the kids will learn a little art history, explore other cultures through art and, of course, CREATE!
• Community School of the Arts (Kansas City, MO) has many dance and theater options - but look closely and you’ll find a few very interesting visual arts offerings too!  Classes are held at St. Teresa’s Academy between Brookside and the Plaza.
• Kansas City Art Institute (Kansas City, MO) has the MOST amazing offerings for kids ages 6-15!  Painting, ceramics, drawing, cartooning, printmaking, bookmaking, collage, sculptural masks, mixed media, pop-up books, pinhole photography and more.  I’m dying to take advantage of this program!  What a treat to have your little ones experience KCAI!
• The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO) doesn’t show any camps for the summer on their website.  But if you’re just looking for something to do for a day or a half day - check them out - they do often have one-off workshops or family days.
• Mattie Rhodes Art Center (Kansas City, MO) doesn’t have their summer schedule posted yet - but check back because they have some great art exploration classes and programs for your little ones!
• The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO) has a mix of hands-on and art appreciation classes for ages 3-18.  But get there soon, they already show some classes are sold-out!
• Paint Glaze and Fire (Overland Park, KS) does ceramics camps in south Overland Park.
• Still Fired Up (Northland) does ceramics camps north of the river!  They have different offerings or, if you can put a group together, they’ll let you customize a class.

I’m sure that there are more art classes and camps to be offered this summer around town.  If I find any interesting ones, I’ll let you know!  In the meantime, take a look at the ones listed here, the ones offered by your parks and rec department and even the ones put on inside your favorite chain craft store (like Michael’s or JoAnn - they’ve always got a full calendar of classes).  There are plenty of places to satisfy your child’s inner artist!

Tags: art, camp, kansas city, leawood, northland, overland park, prairie village

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Lessons/Camps/Classes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.