Spark Camp :: Storytelling

Dates and Main Venue:

Spark Camp :: Storytelling is June 14 – 16 at the Lippmann House, home to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Campers must report to registration at The Charles Hotel by 4pm on Friday. We’ll conclude with our final campfire on Sunday around 2:30pm. We’re thrilled to welcome the Lippmann House at Harvard as our local venue host for Storytelling.

What to Expect at Camp:

All campers should plan to attend the full camp, starting Friday late afternoon. Our activities will take place in three primary locations around Boston and Cambridge. Please check your email for details about our venue and hotel. Our basic schedule is as follows:

FRIDAY

• • Welcome cocktails and registration at our hotel from 4:00pm – 5:15pm. (Please note that all campers, including locals, should attend registration.)
• • Board shuttles at 5:15pm for evening activity. Boston locals may either take the shuttle or caravan behind to the final location (free parking is ample and available).
• • 6:00pm – 11:00pm: Introductions, explanations, dinner and Spark Camp Story Hour.
• • Return to hotel between 11:00pm – 11:30pm.

SATURDAY

• • Optional morning activities: group jog around Cambridge or Hatha Yoga. Meeting times and locations will be announced Friday night. Please bring running shoes and yoga mats/ clothes if you’d like to participate.
• • 9:00am – 9:00pm: Camp sessions, group activities and all meals at the Lippmann House on Harvard’s campus. Walk from hotel to Lippman (approx. 10 minutes).  Locals, please note that parking is extremely difficult around Lippmann. We recommend that you park at our hotel and walk over.
• • Optional evening activities: Spark Camp game night. We’re playing Cards Against Humanity and Celebrity, and there will be plenty of refreshments.

SUNDAY

• • Optional morning activities: group jog around Cambridge or Hatha Yoga. Meeting times and locations will be announced Friday night. Please bring running shoes and yoga mats/ clothes if you’d like to participate.
• • 9:00am – 2:30pm: Camp sessions, group activities and all meals at the Lippmann House on Harvard’s campus. Again, for locals we recommend that you park at our hotel and walk over as parking will be difficult.
• • Closing Campfire: We’ll wrap up Camp with some special activities starting at 2:00pm. Camp will end at 2:30pm.

What to pack:

Spark Camp is a chance to unplug and unwind. Dress is casual throughout the weekend. If the weather is nice, we anticipate holding a number of our sessions and meals outdoors on the lawn. The Lippmann House can sometimes be chilly, so we recommend a light sweater or jacket. If you’re inclined, you might bring a picnic blanket. For those wondering, we’re “camping” at a very nice hotel and Harvard building…no actual camping gear required.

Spark Camp Traditions:

We have a number of Spark Camp traditions, from Game Night to Spark Slam. You’ll learn all about these activities on Friday night, however you may want to prepare just a bit in advance. If you have a favorite personal work – something you’ve written, produced, acted in, performed on, etc. – please feel free to bring copies to Camp. You don’t need to bring enough for everyone, since we have 70 Campers coming. There will be an opportunity to swap your favorite works with other Campers.

Campfire Conversations:

At Spark Camp, we’ll convene around 18 core conversations. Campers will set the agenda for our conversations, which will likely include topics that we’re all curious about:

• • Who and where are today’s storytellers? How do you find them?
• • How do you construct a character, scene or plot over a span of many years or a variety of platforms?
• • What is the audience’s changing role? What is the user’s creative act in storytelling? How do we tell stories collaboratively?
• • How do interesting and arbitrary media constraints – like Twitter’s 140 character or Vine’s six second limit – affect storytelling? What other constraints could you imagine being useful?
• • How do we solve our demand for scale? Most stories in human history were intended to reach a few thousand people at most, but today’s content is expected to reach multitudes. What impact does this have on storytelling?
• • What stories can be better told by data? What kinds of stories can not? Are we putting too much credence into statistics and numbers?
• • How much money does great storytelling really cost? What stories are most worth investing in? And who should pay for them?
• • What have been the most interesting and thought-provoking innovations in storytelling? Who and what has been responsible for them?

Questions?

As always, if you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact us at team @ sparkcamp dot com.