As confirmed COVID cases wreak havoc on summer plans, two organisations have banded together to turn their personal losses into community gains.
When I first came into contact with Residential Summer Strings, run by the Launceston Youth Community Orchestra (LYCO), they were just another booking in our calendar, albeit a large and complex one. Other staff members, who had been around longer than I, chattered excitedly about this incredible camp where lots of people would come together with their stringed instruments and turn something of a noisy cacophony at the start of the week into the most wonderful concert at the end of the week. I was curious about this group, the mugs and chairs I was told we would need, and the endless planning their organisers were doing.
Jan arrived excitedly that Sunday afternoon, kindly filling me in on the various details that had changed since our last correspondence, her family cheerfully working together to sort bits and pieces, organise music and arrange the musician’s chairs around the conductor’s platform. If I’m honest, they weren’t at all what I was expecting – way too down to earth and, well, normal! Sheer numbers will obviously swell the level of detail and I was amazed at the ease and confidence Jan brought to setting up the registrations, managing rooming, liaising with Tutors, and negotiating with children. As the campers started to arrive, it seemed that they must represent every corner of society with people of all ages and backgrounds coming together with one purpose – to make wonderful music together.
Those early days were a little sketchy, when music was still unfamiliar and fingers were coming to grips with newish instruments, or developing the new skill of being able to play for hours each day for a whole week. I saw younger folk being encouraged and guided by their more experienced peers; I saw Tutors from large, professional orchestras instructing and supporting those newcomers. I saw children giggling and playing together and it struck me that these children might, at school, appear to be the odd one out spending all that time practicing their instrument while others were playing football or taking dancing lessons, yet here they were connecting over their shared love and skill and being celebrated for the dedication to their craft.
Today I stand in the middle of an empty dining room which ought to be full, but if I close my eyes I can still feel the mealtime buzz as bows are laid aside and hungry fingers fed. That first memory was January 2022 BC (before COVID) and this year feels rather different.
At first, our pre-camp conversations revolved around the same, general details as in previous years – which activities would be required; how would we manage the volunteers at mealtimes; how many practice spaces were available? But as the Tasmanian borders opened and the community started to grapple with rising COVID cases for the first time in nearly two years, the atmosphere started to shift. In my mind, I was running through the various cleaning regimes and how I could separate our staff into distinct groups to avoid having our whole workforce exposed to the virus at the same time. There were countless conversations around masks and vaccinations (did somebody mention the war?), government requirements and community fears and how were we to reconcile “safe and different” with “making the best of it” and “business as usual”. Then there were the individuals getting sick, quarantining as close contacts, cancelling out of legitimate concern, and a sense of “doing the right thing”.
Business as usual – yeah, right! Nothing is the same. Let’s face it – we have no idea what the next day is going to bring, let alone next week or next month. How is anyone supposed to make a confident decision in a time like this – presented with a myriad of hypotheses, media rhetoric, and a Chinese-whispers version of government stipulations. So when Jan phoned to confirm that Residential Summer Strings would have to wait another year, I can’t say that I was surprised but the Business Manager side of me wanted to plan, to strategise, to find another way (surely there’s another way?) to bring the smiles, the sweet melodies, the dedicated crafters of audible joy back together.
But the dining room is empty.
C’mon; there’s always a third option – what is it? This time it was Margaret, the Residential Strings Camp Coordinator who had the goods. What if we were able to take all the disappointment and turn it into something good? What if we were to invest some of what would have gone towards string camp and make a deposit into a fearful, hurting community? What if our loss could become someone else’s spark of hope?
The suggestion flooded me with a butcher’s roll full of emotions and questions from the uncertainty of our organisation’s long-term ability to survive this virus to a tearful appreciation that someone would look past their own pain and instead of acting out of scarcity and running toward self-protection, they would instead open themselves up to an act of kindness for people we don’t even know by name.
At Camp Clayton, we are constantly seeking to provide a platform for other people to shine upon. Although we operate on business principles, we see these as the guideposts for our greater mission to reach young people for Christ. In addition to running holiday camps for young people, it includes supporting and empowering the broader community who, in turn, support and empower many more young people than we are able to reach by ourselves. Our team thrives on the buzz of providing for people – quite legitimately the more, the better, and LYCO provide one amazing outlet for us to love and serve. Now they have taken that one step further and asked that since they can’t come, could they donate towards the food they would have eaten being provided to those in our community who do not have enough.
As I write, our kitchen staff are preparing meals which will be delivered to Paul’s kitchen, turning the disappointment of so many orchestral musicians around our State to a sense of hope that we can make something positive out of this. Two organisations that exist for the benefit of others, joining forces to plant a new seed of hope in a dark time.