Social-Emotional Development in the Summer Art Camp Setting

Introduction  Social-emotional development refers to the development of one's abilities to understand, regulate, and express emotions and to establish and maintain successful relationships with peers and adults. Education in the arts has been shown to promote learning these skills, but the relationship between social-emotional development and summer art camp has not been explored. Methods The objective of this study is to determine the potential for social-emotional development in a community-based art day camp. A qualitative thematic analysis of the art camp's curriculum was conducted and compared with current literature regarding opportunities for social-emotional development in arts education and summer camp settings. Results The summer art camp curriculum included practices known to facilitate social-emotional learning in school-aged children. The curriculum data themes identified were performance, art projects, and outdoor activities. All of these themes have been shown to facilitate social-emotional skill building and can be connected to the components of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) framework. Conclusions Through the shown benefits of summer camp in combination with the benefits of in-school arts education, art camp provides the unique opportunity to practice self-expression, friend-making, and self-esteem building, all of which can contribute to mental well-being and academic success long-term.