Camping it Up

It’s nearly time for the annual Summer Camp at the Victoria & Albert Museum, with this year’s event spreading across July, August and September and taking in three key themes: Idea, Design and Make.

Summer Camp 2011 will run across three Friday nights, one in each month, and visitors will be able to take part in a range of masterclasses, workshops, talks and – yes – games.

Permanent installations, to run across all nights, will include an installation by Hendzel & Hunt in the V&A’s Grand Entrance and a series of lectures from Alex Rich and Jürg Lehni, who will be accompanied by robots drawing the objects being discussed…

The first night – Idea, to be held in July – will encourage visitors to discover new ideas and concepts. To get the creative juices flowing, Something & Son has created a Rotting Compost Bar, which will use energy from kitchen waste compose to boil water for cups of tea. Yum. Meanwhile Future Cities Project will chair a debate on public architecture and The Decorators will be putting together a mass-authored Summer Camp design manifesto.

The Design portion of Summer Camp will take place over a Friday night and Saturday afternoon in August, and highlights will include guerilla gardener Vanessa Harden showing you how to make ‘seed pills’ – capsules that can be dropped on the ground to plant seeds. Alexa Galea will be hosting speed-drawing classes, Bobby Peterson will be running a game of musical chairs ‘with a twist’ and the Summer Camp speakers corner will play host to anyone with a design frustration to get off their chest.

The series will conclude in September with the Make session, which is based around the Daniel Charny-curated Power of Making exhibition. The Institute of Ideas and V&A design residents Postler Ferguson will host a series of talks focusing on the ‘march of the makers’ trend.

Throughout it all, Bombay Sapphire will be serving a selection of specially designed Imagination Cocktails from its Imagination bar in the John Madejski Garden and other bars throughout the museum.

The V&A Summer Camp takes place on 29 July, 26-27 August and 30 September.