Don’t mind us, we’re just exploring materials over here. ⛺️🪴

Material Exploration Camp is a two-week camp where youth explorers develop and share their stories through materials.

Explorers discover and work with materials—soil, textiles, and sound—to make visual and edible art. Guided by professional artists, explorers will learn and experiment with these materials to create shirts, vases, bowls, sculpture, and songs that reflect their creative voice.

Material Institute’s community centers emerging Black artists from New Orleans and is made up of people across experience, background, generations, and culture.

We believe that learning and growing happens in relationship—with materials, across disciplines, with the natural world, with one another, and with practitioners from around the country and across the world. Through exchange, new possibilities emerge.

ELIGIBILITY

• Age: 5–9
• Available all ten days of camp

SELECTION PROCESS

• 30 spots available
• Priority goes to Black families from New Orleans who live in our surrounding neighborhoods: St. Roch, Bunny Friend Park, St. Claude, Florida Area
• 4–6 spots available for children from other experiences and backgrounds
• Families notified by the end of April

IMPORTANT DATES

April 8th – Applications Open
April 21st – Applications Close
April 30th – Parents Notified
June 1st – Camp Begins
June 12th – Family Day (Camp dismisses after lunch)

COST

We aim to eliminate barriers to creative opportunities for generational New Orleanians. Our pricing is designed as a tiered sliding scale model for families to self-select what they are able to pay at this moment. No one turned away for lack of funds.

$25 – Basic 
$125 – Reduced 
$250 – Full price
$350 – Supporter
$500 – Pay it forward
$25 – For additional siblings