Summer 2025 Joins Art & Nature!

LA River Arts @ Everlasting Education:

Join us for a fully outdoor summer of nature connection, exploration and creativity! Over the course of each week of camp, knowledgable and enthusiastic teaching artists and naturalists will lead fun-packed educational experiences all in the outdoors! As they run, hike, and play throughout our varied green spaces, campers will learn about the climate of Southern California and learn from the humans, the plants and animals that have called this region home for thousands of years.

Who: 5 - 12 year old students

Time: 8:30am - 3:00pm

FULL SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION - VISIT EVERLASTING EDUCATION:

For the weeks of July 7th, 14th, and 21st, LARA joins the Nature Connection Program organized by Everlasting Education in a daytime youth camp to deepen and diversify our relationship with the watershed while growing our community. Campers will meet at a variety of locations throughout the east side of Los Angeles to explore the chapparal and riparian environments of the Los Angeles River Watershed. While the impact of human development is everywhere - campers will observe the boundless creativity of Nature and how our own human nature can connect with and nurture balance with this place through our own creative activities.

Locations Vary - Each day of camp meets at different parks throughout Los Angeles, including:

Ernest E. Debs Park (Montecito Heights)

LA State Historic Park (Chinatown)

Lewis MacAdams Park (Elysian Valley/Frogtown)

Elysian Park (Echo Park)

Griffith Park (Los Feliz/Atwater)

Hahamongna Watershed Park (El Prieto Canyon, Altadena)

Eaton Canyon (Altadena)

Please note that these locations are subject to change based on weather or any other programming needs.

What to expect:

• immersive wildlife observation,

• plant and animal identification,

• trail hiking,

• nature games,

• interpretive creative activities,

• conversations about:

• environmental ethics & indigenous tech

• social-emotional learning & reciprocity

• A VERY GOOD TIME

ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

Book and Zine Making

Our curriculum activates youth voices, narratives and perspectives as they write their own poems using river-related word banks. Campers respond with words and drawings to the plants, animals and other discoveries from the Arroyo to make their own books and zines.

Improv Games

Words and stories from the First People explain the plants and places here forming images in our minds. Campers may embody these names and narratives in games foregrounding our interconnectedness and our place in the landscape; moving, orienteering and improvising with our teaching artists under the sycamores.

Sensory Awareness Activities

Campers tap into their 5 senses to slow down and examine their environments throughout the week. Fun games and activities guide campers to understanding the power of Owl Eyes, Deer Ears, Raccoon Touch, Fox Walking and more.

Sit Spots

Campers take 5 - 30 minutes of silent and still time to examine their environment

Nature Connection Games and Activities

Identifying local plants and animals, hiking to peaks to examine topography, hiding in bushes, creating nature mandalas, barefoot walks, orienteering (learning cardinal directions in relation to sun, mountains, river, sea).

City Connection

Riding the LA Metro, discussing the city’s history, admiring the skyline, examining the freeways and the concretization of the rivers, examining: what is Los Angeles?

Monumental Media

Hands-on skill-building with assemblage, lashing, and knot-tying. Cultivating transferable skills in place making grounded in location and community-based considerations encourages youth to site their work carefully by tracing solar paths, feeling the wind, learning to read where water flows over the land when it rains and establishing the cardinal points at the site as they work together to build a monumental work of art -- repurposing debris the river left behind.

Freeform Exploration

Child-directed unstructured playtime. We believe that kids in Nature will discover fun and the laws of physics with minimal interference from counselors - who stand by to assist and maintain safety, but mainly just stay out of the way of campers’ organic explorations in this safe and fertile environment.

Each day, students should be prepared with:

24 oz. water (minimum)

hearty snack

filling lunch

backpack to fit these items

sturdy and comfortable walking shoes

Note: some days will require water shoes and quick dry clothes. Details to come as the program dates near.

Please reach out directly with any questions you have! michael@everlastingeducation.org

Staff

Have a look at the faces and fun times from our pilot program:

Our pilot Public Art Camp (Summer 2022) supported campers at both Hermon Park and Downey Rec Center creating poetry books, engaging in creative play, and repurposing debris (treasures!) from the River to collaborate on a monumental sculpture held together with non-toxic materials (lashing with rattan, no plastics, etc.) while employing traditional weaving/ lashing techniques. We considered the animal and plant relatives at the parks and built-in habitats for them as we co-created sculptures from river debris. 

Campers responded to the prompt: What does it look like to make art that helps Nature?

METHODOLOGY:

In sessions shaped by regional Indigenous Cultural Practioners (Tongva/ Chumash) and led by teaching artists, youth will learn that social and ecological justice go hand-in-hand, how we are all connected, that Los Angeles has been called Tovangaar for thousands of years by its First Peoples, how the river came to be channelized, and that art is transformative!

LA THIS WEEK featured our pilot public art camp in summer 2022 - see this short video!

“This is a good program that should be offered throughout all of our parks!”
— Supervisor Hilda Solis