Living Art Camp Promotes STEAM Lessons for Floral Designers of the Future

Weekly variety of fun themes offers something
for all ages in Flower Duet’s latest online school teachings

A student from Flower Duet’s 2019 Living Art Camp prepares a hand-tied bouquet.

Summer camp evokes thoughts of fun crafts, singing by a campfire and learning how to sail. For the summer of 2020, Flower Duet wants kids (and their parents) to learn how to make fabulous floral designs, botanical crafts and gain a few entrepreneurship skills, too! Flower Duet’s online Living Art Camp enables anyone to fill the void many summer camps left behind after being cancelled due to social-distancing guidelines.

To align with most parents’ wishes to keep kids occupied over the summer with activities that are fun and educational, my sister and business partner Casey Coleman Schwartz and I have come up with 12 weeks of “Living Art Camp” themes ranging from American Flowers Week to coincide with SlowFlowers.com’s annual celebration of American flower farmers, to Wizard Week for fans of Harry Potter. We’ll also be showcasing STEAM topics in every weekly camp theme.

Students at Flower Duet’s 2019 camp prepare blooms to try out a leaf-dye project where they pounded the flower colors into paper to make patterns.

Casey describes the importance of floral education for children: “As a full-service floral design company, we use all the skills in real life that kids are learning about in the classroom in an abstract way. For example, in our floral business, we use knowledge of botanical science to keep flowers alive and even grow them ourselves. We will be teaching about the Science aspect of floral design in every weekly camp as well as the other STEAM topics of Technology, Engineering, Art and Math.”

With a current schedule of twelve themed weeks, we are excited to include the themes of Classic Art, Garden Week, Jurassic Jungle, Gamer Camp, Outer Space, Ice Princess, Beach Week and more!

Streamlined Access to Online Learning

Students learned how to safely glue with succulents during our 2019 Living Art Camp.

Flower Duet’s students have already benefitted from an in-person kids’ Living Art Camp held at our studio space in the summer of 2019. Campers attended a week-long camp, completed three lessons each morning and took home fresh new botanic designs and crafts each day. The ages of campers were from age 7 to 15 and included an equal mix of boys and girls. We used our decade of experience teaching the hands-on children’s floral design classes at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. to adapt to a daily camper curriculum that was fun, scientific and creative.

“Our online flower school offers a large variety of courses that are within reach of new and experienced designers alike,” says Casey. “We’ve been teaching floral design for over 20 years in-person at workshops, during live garden club demonstrations and online through YouTube, on television and through our online school.”

As with all our online classes, students can go at their own pace. They can watch the step-by-step (or stem-by-stem) video lessons as many times as they wish to understand the project before trying it out on their own. There is one project for each day of the week Monday through Friday, and we’ll have weekly Zoom check-ins with all the campers.

Three Options for Each Week of Camp

Kit’s daughter Keely holds up a naturally dyed cotton bag during the 2019 in-person Living Art Camp at Flower Duet.

Campers can sign up for the weekly camps online. The first camp goes live the week of June 22, 2020 when most schools are officially out for summer. Flower Duet will also offer a live-stream virtual crafting meetup as part each weekly camp via Zoom video conference. Students have choices and three price points for each weekly camp. If they live in the Los Angeles area, they can sign up for the week of camp which includes all the supplies and flowers they pick up curbside at our studio on the Monday of that week’s class. If they live remotely, we will ship their themed camp box of supplies to them and they can procure the flowers from their local farmers and floral suppliers and the final option is students can access all the online materials but get all the flowers and supplies themselves.

Encouraging Campers to Purchase Flowers from Local Farmers

Our second week of camp kicks off with American Flowers Week and we’ll be working with locally grown flowers all week!

Every project includes a flower and supply recipe sheet for each camper. During each project, we encourage students to purchase flowers from local flower farmers. The first resource we list on every tip sheet is SlowFlowers.com! Our American Flowers Week Camp starts June 29, 2020 and will include lessons featuring flowers that are in season and easy to find around the United States from local growers.

An at-a-glance outline of the popular STEAM Curriculum

Details:
Flower Duet, flowerduet.com, @flowerduetla

Kit Wertz

Kit Wertz is one-half of Flower Duet, a floral company in Los Angeles she co-owns with her sister, Casey Coleman Schwartz. Kit is a regular feature writer for floral trade magazine The Bloomin’ News. She and her sister have appeared on national television shows, been featured in the major magazines including Sunset and Florists’ Review and major newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and The New York Times for our floral design work. We were speakers at The Slow Flowers Summit in Washington D.C. in 2018 and are proud members of SlowFlowers.com to help promote locally grown flowers everywhere, but especially in our home state of California.