Fifteen students participated in lessons at Senator Myles Venne School last week. (Submitted photo/Eliza Doyle)

By Derek Cornet

the arts

CAMP offers summer music lessons to northern youth

Jul 4, 2022 | 2:49 PM

Teachers with Community Arts Mentorship Programming (CAMP) have been offering special lessons recently to young people in northern Saskatchewan.

That’s according to founder Eliza Doyle, who explained herself and fellow musicians LJ Tyson, Kacy Anderson, Micah Erenberg and Mitch Dureault were at Senator Myles Venne School last week working with students.

“LJ had been teaching there for about four months throughout the year, so he knew the kids,” she said. “The music camp started on June 28 and students had lessons in ukelele, fiddle, keyboard, guitar, banjo and song writing. We ended up writing a song and recording it because one of our instructors has a mobile recording studio.”

The classes were opened to anyone between Grades 6-12 and Doyle noted students came from Stanley Mission, as well as La Ronge’s Churchill Community High School. She added there were 15 students involved and seven made it to a performance July 1 at the Napatāk Ramble.

“They were so excited. Some of them had never played before, never written a song, never performed in public,” Doyle said. “They were very nervous, excited and they practiced really hard, and it sounded fantastic. The crowd loved it.”

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Doyle will be at Beauval’s Valley View School this week to do a similar program for students between Grades 5 to 12. There are still spots available and the lessons will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Participants in front of Senator Myles Venne School. (Submitted photo/Eliza Doyle)

Those who participate will also have the opportunity on Thursday to perform for family and friends. Doyle stated the program works well for young people because they have a lot to express and just need help putting their ideas together, creating melodies and song structure.

“This is our first time doing this and next time we want to get mentees in the community to job shadow us,” Doyle said. “We will do more camps and they will job shadow us for one week and then we will get them to lead the camp for the next week. We want to have more people able to put on the music camps because so many communities have contacted me about wanting them in their community, but there are only so many weeks in the summer where I can teach.”

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @saskjourno