Camp Firebelly 2011

After a grueling night of strategizing over the direction of our creative brief for CNC (Center for New Community), we were gearing up for a few hours of precious sleep – some of us were fresh off of flights/busses into Chicago and had barely slept the night before. We were psyched to finally hit the hay around 3am.

Then tragedy struck.

Actually, not so much tragedy, but bad luck. The water heater busted and leaked all throughout the studio. The water seeped through the floor and started dripping from the ceiling of the first floor, where all of the campers were set to sleep.

Cue frantic clean-up by camp counselors! Deborah, Will, and Darren worked diligently on trying to throw buckets down to catch the leaking water while also trying to mop everything up. It was a test against time.

Soooooooo fast forward to 6am, when we all finally brought our airbeds up to the studio floor. We slept like babies…for about an hour and a half. It’s no biggie, because hell, it’s camp, right?! I guess we got close to “roughing it” last night, ha.

When we awoke, we had Martha Cotton, head of research at GravityTank come in and give us a great presentation about….presentations! It definitely helped us redirect our creative breif a little bit, which was due a few hours afterward.

The presentation to CNC went great and they responded quite well to our scope and direction for their campaign. Feedback was recieved and we were given the blessing to continue on our way to making a kick ass Poster, Website, and Tabloid for CNC.

Oh man, and there’s been so much more – afterwards, we had an amazing woman named Mary from the Morton Group who started an incredibly engaging talk about race and privilege. The campers all opened up and shared their stories of struggle and triumph with race, class, and societal issues.

After a little break, we were divided into our groups – yours truly being in the web site group. There was also a Tabloid and a Poster group, and we’re all given the responsibility of building our respective assets for CNC.

We had a great brainstorm/learning session, had lunch, and went on our second mystery trip! A trip to Tony Fitzpatrick’s home to basically, hear his story.

What an incredible story indeed.

I really can’t describe everything we heard, and to be frank, you really had to be there to understand it. Tony was so incredibly sincere and heartful about his advice and about sharing his passion for art with us.

Right now, I’m sitting in front of this big ass iMac and counting down the minutes until we get back in our groups for another late night session. Hopefully, this time we’ll get more than a couple hours of sleep.

But then again…You can sleep when you’re dead.