Camp Quest UK aims to provide a wide range of physical and mental activities. These change from year to year, depending on the facilities at the host camp site and the individual expertise of our staff.
We aim to get a balance of “outdoorsy” activities, mixed in with more cerebral sessions covering topics like philosophy, critical thinking, science and religion. Some of the sessions we held in 2009 included: Philosophy for Children (P4C), pseudoscience, astronomy, logical fallacies and much more! Outdoors activities included: archery, zip wire, climbing, high ropes, canoeing, rafting, the Great Wall, air rifle shooting, night line and the assault course!

Each year Camp Quest UK has a different theme. In 2009 we celebrated the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of “The Origin of Species” with an Evolution themed camp. We had talks about the life and work of Charles Darwin, songs about evolution and a special visit from volunteers at the Natural History Museum, London. “The Creature Challenge” was set for every group to encourage campers to think about the creative power of evolution and how a change in the environment might affect a living organism’s appearance and behaviour. Every group picked a random sample of geometric shapes which they had to arrange into a living organism. Every group was asked to think about the kind of world that their creature lives in and how it functions within that world. They were then each given a “global event” or selection pressure and asked how their creature would adapt to the new environment. Every group expressed their ideas through a huge range of mediums including song, drama, collage, poetry, painting and storytelling.

For 2010 our theme will be “The Mind” and we will base many of our sessions around questions such as “Do robots have a mind?” or “Are we more than the sum of all our brain cells?”. We aim to introduce children to a difficult subject in a fun, casual and engaging way, encouraging campers to develop and articulate their thoughts and certainly encouraging the campers to disagree with each other.
At the beginning of camp 2010 we will announce the challenge for this year’s theme.

The Invisible Unicorn Challenge

Every Camp Quest is inhabited by no less and no more than two invisible unicorns. These unicorns can’t hurt you, don’t eat anything and, in general, leave no trace and keep themselves to themselves. It is up to the campers to disprove the existence of these unicorns. The first camper to prove that the unicorns don’t exist will receive a ten pound note (and if the approving face of Charles Darwin wasn’t enough!) signed by famous scientist and writer Richard Dawkins. The American prize is a hundred dollar bill without the inscription “In God we Trust”. To this date, no camper has completed the challenge.

Our unicorns are very misunderstood and have filed complaints to the ethical standards department of several tabloid newspapers. Unfortunately, neither can be seen, heard, smelled, touched or tasted.
All the camp counselors have faith that the unicorns exist and find words like “onus” and “fallacy” deeply offensive. Their beliefs are proven by years of tradition and proclamations of fact from some very important people.

But unicorns are mysterious things and sometimes something very strange happens: Many of the campers (and Germaine Greer) build an appreciation and understanding of the unicorns in the very process of disproving their existence. These campers help the rest of us carry on the conversation.