Reflecting on the Digital Årø Camp

At the beginning of 2021 it had already been decided that there would be no international Baltic Sea Summer Camp this year. I still vividly remember the conversation I had with the German UNESCO BSP Coordinator Martin Jarrath sometime in February. We were talking about the International Coordinator meeting planned for the beginning of March and I brought up the topic of the camp in Årø one last time. I asked Martin whether we should just go for it and do the whole thing digital. We could put together some ideas, present it to the other coordinators and see if others were also interested. 2 minutes later the decision had been made – we were all in.

At the first planning meeting the most decisive point for the future of this camp was brought up by Gedy Matisen, the Estonian National Coordinator at the time, who is now on maternity leave. She said that all the students at the past camps had always talked about the camp feeling and the spirit at the international camps and suggested that we try to make that possible digitally as well. I knew what she meant, I knew she was right, but I had no idea how that was going to work.

Five days before the camp started, on Friday, April 30th we had one last meeting before sending out the final information to the participants, and we decided to completely change the opening event on Wednesday afternoon before the workshops. Instead of doing a livestream we put everyone together in one big Zoom Meeting and just did round after round of speed dating exercises. We played music, had fun, and just encouraged everyone to be themselves, open up to others, and get ready for a great camp.

It was a great start. And we had great speakers. And great workshops. A great BioBlitz. A great visual scribe. And we had great participants. Something about this mix created an incredible atmosphere at this camp. I received emails from workshop facilitators thanking us for letting them be a part of such a camp, even though they had donated their time and we were the ones trying to do the thanking! An image I will never forget is that of a participant during the closing ceremony who had accidently left their break-out room. She decided to take the opportunity to say thank you and almost broke into tears as she was describing her wonderful experience over the last few days.

Thank you, Martin, for having the courage to go all in, thank you coordinators for supporting this crazy idea, thank you digital Årø team for showing up to meetings every single week for almost two months and thank you everyone else who contributed to such a transformative experience.

Nick
Camp Director
Coordinator for the UNESCO BSP Programme for GCED

The Digital Årö streams on Youtube: 

May 4th: https://youtu.be/PaRp-y2DJPM 

May 5th: https://youtu.be/zQws-yAkFKI 

May 6th: https://youtu.be/kOOl9yOHGmk

May 7th: https://youtu.be/U-1yLBRcglg