SPIRAL’s Story

Empowering our kids in supporting one another and learning how to tell their story!

Spiral Theater Camp is began as a 3-legged stool along with Black Dirt Community Theater and Hastings Community Education. The vision was simple - to provide safe, encouraging, art-centered experiences for the kiddos of Hastings and neighboring communities. Spiral Theater Camp Director, Elizabeth Damico-Carper, launched such a camp for Black Dirt in the summer of 2019 - what a time we had putting on a show in a week and touring around town to share with others! The pandemic put the brakes on further ventures…until the summer of 2022. Molly McElory jumped on board and offered her expertise and master’s degree in theater education and our dream really took off!

Summer 2022 Elizabeth, Molly and two staff members ran four weeks of camp out of the Tilden Community Center gym. We are still so grateful for the families that took a chance on a brand new program and we’re so proud of our staff that jumped in with both feet learning how to corral and teach large groups of children the elements of theater.

We learned and we GREW and summer 2023 gave us double the number of campers and a new space at the Hastings Middle School. Working on a stage, expanding to the visual arts, the SPIRAL program gave more kids more ways to express themselves and learn how to work as a team in the doing.

Summer 2024….we cannot wait to see the adventures that await us! We now function as an independent vendor, with Black Dirt Theater continuing to support us as a fiscal agent. All of the operational and programmatic efforts come from Elizabeth & Molly working year-round to create, grow, and dream up every detail of every day of camp.