Steve & Kate’s Camp to Open 4 Los Angeles Locations: Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Woodland Hills, Pasadena

An award-winning children’s day camp known for its guiding philosophy of letting kids decide their own activities is bringing for the first time its 32 year tradition to Los Angeles – Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Woodland Hills and Pasadena. “After 32 years of running camps in the Bay Area, we’re excited to introduce our approach of self-directed camps to Southern California – a breeding ground for creativity,” said owners Steve and Kate Susskind. The camp offers six creative studios – animation, music, style, dance, culinary and building through which campers have the ability to express themselves freely in a world liberated from adult judgment. “It’s not our job to dictate what the story should be,” Steve Susskind says. “It’s our job to help them tell their stories.”

In addition to its studios and recreational activities like water slides and zip lines which are offered at all locations, Steve and Kate’s Camp is partnering with Los Angeles groups to offer local programming as well. As part of its ‘Specials’ campers in LA will be graced with local workshop leaders like Victoria Goring – a stage combat director for stage and film – who will expose children to the dynamics of stage combat in order to create original moves connecting action to storytelling. Steve and Kate’s Camp is also partnering with local CSA provider SavRaw which delivers organic food boxes to 25 neighborhoods in the greater Los Angeles area and now four more as the camp will serve as a host for SavRaw at its LA locations. Food from SavRaw will also be incorporated into the camp’s culinary studio.

Steve & Kate’s Camp is equally flexible for parents, liberating them from the frustration of weekly sessions. There are two ways to play: The Day Pass and The Membership. Parents can buy any number of Day Passes and use them anytime. Unused paid passes are automatically refunded in full at summer’s end. The Membership is one fee that covers the whole summer and if a camper doesn’t use enough to justify the cost of the Membership his/her account is converted to Day Pass rate and the difference in cost is refunded automatically. Both plans allow families to attend anytime from 7:30 am to 6 pm, at any location and it even includes lunch and snacks.

Lunch at Steve & Kate’s is a big deal. Chef Nate Keller, former Executive Chef at Google, has joined the team full-time and has developed a culturally diverse menu based on Italian, Mexican, Japanese, American and French cuisines. Some items are adventurous–coq au vin and eggplant parm–and others are kids’ classics–quesadillas and mac & cheese. He uses local and organic ingredients whenever he can and puts healthy twists on items like sneaking cauliflower into the mac & cheese sauce so that the meal is well balanced. Lunch comes alive thanks to the onsite cooks who fire each dish right before the kids eat. In keeping with the philosophy, campers can choose one of six options each day or eat them all if they are ambitious.

Activities include:

Studios: Nestled inconspicuously within Steve & Kate’s are six creative hives where campers lose themselves in uninhibited exploration. Inevitably, campers venture into one or more of them. Inside, they find copious supplies and professional equipment. Each studio is available every day at every location. Studios include: Stop-Motion Animation, Music Recording, Building, Dance, Culinary Arts and Style.

Weekly specials: Each week there is a mind-blowing new thrill –a hurricane water slide, a zip-line, air cannons, rock climbing, obstacle courses, inflatable hamster wheels, water balloon launchers. Expect the unexpected.

Daily specials: Every day of the week has its own special activity. Whether it’s go-kart racing, playing Frisbee® golf, juggling diabolos on a balance board, or traversing a slackline, no two days of the week look the same.

Show Specials: At least once a week, campers are surprised with wild new phenomena—a King Cheetah, a stage combat workshop led by child actors, performances by a young dance troupe, a reptile show with a blue tongue skink and a python. Of course it could also be a 10-year old beatboxer. Or a violin prodigy. Dozens of novel acts grace the stage—many performed by inspiring youth as a way of showing what young people are capable of.

Pure play: The choices for campers are virtually endless. They have a self-serve supply of books, strategy games like chess and Magic cards, thousands of precision-cut construction blocks, foosball, pogo sticks and stilts. They jump into rounds of dodgeball and capture the flag. And win prizes finding the rubber chicken and at Game Show.

Sports: Soccer, hockey, racquet sports and field polo action take place in our custom, kid-sized inflatable stadium, where the ball doesn’t go out and the action rarely stops.

Filmmaker-In-Residence: Camp becomes a movie studio lot each day when campers collaborate as actors and crew with our Filmmaker-in-Residence. Films are scripted, shot and edited, then premiered at Camper Showcase across all of the 39 locations.

Please Note: Specific dates vary by location and are subject to change depending on school calendars. Camp is closed on July 4th. For location and rate information call 415.389.KIDS or go to http://www.steveandkate.com/fees/.

Testimonial:

“The children that attend Steve and Kate’s blossom and discover a freedom of identity that, in a way, no other institution I’ve experienced has ever managed. Kids find their thumbprint at Steve and Kate’s. My one complaint is: Where were they when I was a kid?” ––Andrew Stanton, Academy Award-winning writer/director of “Finding Nemo” and WALL-E

Recent Press:

Variety Magazine (March 26, 2013): Free-Form Camp Fires Up Young Minds by Jon Weisman

Pacific Sun (Best of Marin Issue – April, 2013): Voted Best Summer Day Camp