Wayfinder Wisdom

In this series each post focuses on a specific aspect of camp. It is our attempt to share some of the knowledge we have accumulated in more than a decade of LARPing.

Camp’s Magic Circle

Camp’s Magic Circle

0K6A8668Recently I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about play and what it is. I’ve been taking a class on play theory (one of many reasons my writing of this blog has lagged so heavily) in which we have been looking at different definitions of play that people have had throughout the years and the implications of each one. Wayfinder is the reason I signed up for the course. Seeing as we talk about and engage in play so much within our community, I wanted to get an idea of what the broader view on the topic was. As we’ve progressed I’ve also been looking at my own beliefs as to what play is, what role it holds in this community, and what play has done for me. I’ll probably write more of the personal responses to play as time passes but for right now I want to look at some of the ways play applies to camp at large.

One thing that play requires, as defined by the theorists, is a set of parameters which play exists within. Of the different terms used to describe this, I think the best I’ve encountered is the “Magic Circle.” The Magic Circle is essentially a space that we agree to enter that, once inside, everything can be understood to be play. This is a broader concept than the most active and named construction of space that we have at camp, we call it the “Play Space.” While a “Play Space” generally comes with a set of physical boundaries and a time limit (they usually exist for the duration of specific workshops), camp is a collection of different Magic Circles, the most obvious being everything that happens within the Adventure Game, which literally starts with a circle. From the very minute you show up to camp though, you are stepping into a much larger magic circle. Play is a way we all get to interact, to learn about each other and ourselves, to remind ourselves that we have stepped out of the world at large and into some place we can let down some of our boundaries, a place we can really trust each other in. That space only exists because of the play we have done to create it.0K6A0886

The very first thing that you do when you show up to camp is play. Literally the first workshop on any camp schedule (and every morning at day camp) is called opening play. So from the very second we all arrive into that space we step into that kind of circle, a place where we know that we are safe to play. Important to this is that there is an ability to opt out of the games that we play (very important to the idea of play is that it’s voluntary). Even with the Adventure Game we have an “out of game space” where you can go should things be too intense and you need to step away. Even within the games themselves there are chances for people to have different levels of intensity. We have systems that allow for people to say when something has become too much for them, when it has become unsafe, and we talk a lot about playing to our partner’s level, making sure that we are calling people into a kind of play they are comfortable engaging in. None of this should be viewed as taking away from anyone’s experience. Our magic circle, the one we build that holds camp inside of it, has space inside of it for you to play (or not) at your own level of comfort. Having that kind of space, which allows for a variety of needs, is integral to building the community that we have.

Through the space for people to play or not play in specific games as they need, we show our community at large that this space is a safe one for them to engage with when they’re ready. While, by the nature and needs of supervision, you aren’t given free reign over the physical spaces you may always occupy, you are allowed to set your level of engagement. The same can be said of the community. Our community provides a lot of opportunities for personal engagement. There are regular trust workshops, morning circles, and story circles which allow for different kinds of semi-guided sharing. When these come up, the kind of play that we’ve been doing (and specifically the idea of playing to your partner’s level) allows for community members to decide on any level of participation they may feel comfortable with. When you see everything we do at camp as included in this magic circle, the same rules that dictate play dictate every interaction. Relationships built at camp are built around play. Conversations between us then, by nature, have some of these play elements woven into them. There is no place at camp where you can look without seeing that play is alive and well.
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There’s a lot more that I could (and hope to) say about play at camp, in the world, and in my life. For now let me close by saying that as I’ve been learning more about how the scientific community views play, (they’re pretty shaky on why it exists but they’ve distilled some things it’s capable of and some good guidelines as to when something should be defined as play) one thing has been very clear to me. Play is alive and well at camp. We play everyday, we play hard, and we have a strong idea as to the importance of play within our community. Thanks for playing with me.

Written by Judson Easton Packard
11/9/17

Take It Home With You

Take It Home With You

21017471_10155575641123698_1641010195_oClosing circle at camp almost always includes a specific message and call to action: the things we do at camp can be brought out into your regular life. This isn’t to say that you’re going to get everyone you meet to break out into LARPing games at school or in your day to day lives, but instead that much of the work we do on ourselves at camp can be applied to ourselves outside. Personally the comfort and confidence I have found in myself through Wayfinder has allowed me to navigate social situations for the past 14 years of my life. It’s taken a combination of the different types of skills and knowledge I gained through camp in order to be able to cultivate those qualities in myself.

Maybe the simplest (and the easiest to overlook) is the work we do with improv. The rules to improv games form a great set of conversational guidelines. If you go into social situations with them in mind (accept and build, make your partner look good, go with the flow) it can be easy to get a conversation going. Many Wayfinder attendees over the years (including several of our alums from the Where Are They Now series) have talked about the ways that they just treat uncomfortable professional or social settings like they were roleplay situations. This is the same kind of guideline. You decide upon the version of yourself you want to be playing that day, and then put it into action. Improv and Status workshops at their cores are essentially a form of low stakes social training that we engage in together.

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Another way I have found myself able to bring camp into my daily life (and thus keep alive some of the feelings of connectedness that I get while I’m there) is to try and bring as much of the trust work as I have done there into my daily interactions. Again I’m talking about the core tenets of what we do in those workshops not the actual exercises (though I have sat with non-camp friends and done a session of the stare into each others eyes and take turns sharing workshop when I really had a need for that kind of guided sharing). Consider the ideas that we work on: establishing and communicating clear boundaries for yourself, being a safe place for people to share their personal business, and relying on the people around you for support. If you move through the world guided by the work you’ve done in those spaces, it can allow you to create the kinds of bonds you have made at camp in the outside world.

The Adventure Game itself is rife with experiences to pull into your daily life. As we often talk about, every character you play comes from somewhere inside of you, which means it’s there any time you may need to access it. Now it may not always be necessary or appropriate for you to draw on being a demon hunter (or even just a demon), but sometimes you need a little bit of that kind of spitfire, me against the world, bravery. Everyone of us has faced down death and the end of the world through Adventure Games, and while clearly those stakes were imagined, there still is an element of having to make snap decisions with real in Game consequences. Remembering that kind of high tension decision making can be helpful when it comes to those moments in your everyday life.

Camp helps us form who we are. It doesn’t have to stop doing so when we leave the land and return to daily life. Those ways we feel empowered to be ourselves through camp can be hard to hold on to. We all live in each others’ memories as those versions of ourselves. If they can hold on to that piece of us, why shouldn’t we?

Written by Judson Easton Packard

on 9/19/2017

Hero Fund

The Hero Fund

At Wayfinder we believe in the work that we do. Giving children and teenagers a safe, playful place to explore their identity is important, and we’ve dedicated a lot of years to making sure we’re able to provide that. Every teenager needs a space outside of school and their family to explore who they are and who they’re becoming. Not every teenager comes from a family or situation that can afford to send them to summer camp to provide that kind of experience. That’s where the Hero Fund comes in. Often Hero Fund applicants come from economically disadvantaged families, families where one or more parents are undergoing serious medical treatment, or have recently lost a job. Wayfinder is the place where these young people feel most comfortable and open, particularly in moments of familial unrest like these. Wayfinder has always striven to help people in need of financial assistance since it’s inception; for the past three years we’ve been asking our community to help us with that goal.

In 2014, Wayfinder started the Hero Fund, our scholarship program. The Hero Fund is funded through donations and money made from our Frontier Adventures that we run throughout the off-season. In the end (being a company based around community), Wayfinder often operates at a loss to help get everyone we can to camp. Donations generally come from community members who feel that camp is an important space to them, and extended community members, such as parents, who have seen the benefits of our programs. One of the largest donating demographics are our staff pool, with 16 different staff members having personally donated to the fund, making the work we do at Wayfinder a priority for them. Staff have donated paychecks at the end of events, donated after they were no longer able to be involved in camp, or just donated when they could afford to (the best present that I got when I graduated from college was a Hero Fund donation).

While the money coming in from people who are already involved is important, Wayfinder is currently at a need for donations. Over the past three years we are proud to say that the Hero Fund has been able to give over $15,000 in assistance to participants in need. We are so thankful to the community for having provided this much for our members who need that extra help. For this coming summer, we have requests for almost $8,000 in Hero Fund funds. Money is allocated based upon the amount that our participants are able to pay to be at camp and the amount of money we’ve had donated and raised throughout the year. We do everything we can with the donation money to provide a space for as many people as possible. We also take the privacy of our applicants very seriously, and never share even the fact that someone has asked for assistance with the community at large.

We’re calling on our community to help us raise this money with the summer fast approaching. The Hero Fund supplies campers with access to a space that meets a certain kind of need in their lives, one that can be particularly hard to meet. Wayfinder as a community and an organization offers people acceptance. At the age at which people start coming to camp this may be something they have never experienced before. Countless participants have talked to me about the ways in which Wayfinder has saved their lives (and a couple of weeks ago I wrote about how it had done that for me on this very blog). So often kids come to camp shy or nervous, only to leave by the end of the week glowing. I could never possibly list the number of parents who have told me that Wayfinder was the time their child was happiest. This summer we’d like to offer that to as many participants as possible; some of them need a little help to get there. Please help us be the difference in those children’s lives.

Written by Judson Easton Packard

Published 6/22/2017