Summer Camp

Session 1 - Monday, June 22—Friday, June 26, 2026
Session 2 - Monday, July 20 —Friday, July 24, 2026

The Shapeshifters Summer Youth Media-Makers Camp is a week-long, hands-on, workshop-style camp for youth, ages 12-17 to learn a variety of DIY, experimental film and sound-based processes from experienced Bay Area-based artists and educators. Campers will come away with basic knowledge of experimental media history and practice, a deeper understanding of visual and auditory sense perceptions, and a foundational toolbox to continue making creative, DIY moving image and sound projects using simple and accessible resources and processes.

This year we are offering two sessions, in June and July. Each session will feature different processes, so campers can sign up for one or both sessions.

Scholarships are available for students registered in a Title I school. Please contact us for more information: connect at shapeshifterscinema dot com

Session 1: June 22–26, 2026

Day 1: Panorama Crankies
(Risa Lenore)

Campers will learn how to make pre-cinematic moving panorama "crankies".

Day 2: Found Sound
(Cheryl E. Leonard)

Campers will learn how to produce and record sounds using natural and manmade found objects and various kinds of microphones and sound-making techniques.

Day 3: Cut Paper, Collage Animation
(Lydia Greer)

Campers will create collage animations using cut paper and digital animation software.

Day 4: Multimedia Poetry
(Kathleen Quillian)

Campers will explore intersections between image, sound, motion and language to create expansive, poetic, multimedia compositions.

Day 5: Material Cinema
(Ellie Vanderlip)

Campers will use inks, pens, needles, sand paper, bleach and other household materials to paint, scratch, puncture, and otherwise manipulate the surface of 16mm film to make moving images without a camera.

Session 2: July 20–24, 2026

Day 1: Shadow Puppets
(Lydia Greer)

Campers will explore ways to create projected images with light, shadow, props, masks, and other objects.

Day 2: Virtual Sound Making
(Jon Leidecker)

Campers will learn about the history of physical electronic music instruments, and the slow switch to software and virtual versions of historical instruments via tablets and iphones.

Day 3: Apparent Motion
(Kathleen Quillian)

Campers will learn about and explore ways to create motion pictures without the use of cameras or projectors.

Day 4: Creative Coding
(Gilbert Guerrero)

Campers will learn how to make dynamic, digital designs using simple coding language and digital devices.

Day 5: Phytography
(Ellie Vanderlip)

Campers will explore ways to make cameraless images with non-toxic/biodegradable ingredients, plants and sunlight.

Camp Details

Location: Shapeshifters Cinema, 567 5th St. Oakland, CA
Dates: Session 1 - Monday, June 22—Friday, June 26, 2026
            Session 2 - Monday, July 20 —Friday, July 24, 2026
Camp Hours: 9am-3pm, every day
After-Camp: 3-5pm (as needed, for an additional charge of $12/hr.)
Final showcase: Friday June 26th, from 3-4pm (Session 1) & Friday July 24, 2026 (Session 2)
Cost: $550 (includes all workshop materials)
Optional add-on: $50/week for lunch (prepared by our on-site café, includes made-to-order sandwiches, salads and beverages)

Daily Schedule (9:00am-3:00pm)

8:45-9:00am: Campers arrive
9:00-10:00am: Warm-up with creative responses to daily prompts in sketchbook/journal
10:00-10:15am: Break/Snack
10:15-11:30am: Artist Talk/Slideshow/Demo
11:30am-12:15pm: Lunch
12:15-2:45pm: Workshop
2:45-3:00pm: Clean-up/Pack-up

After-Camp Activities (3:00-5:00pm)

  • Continue working on daily projects
  • Journal/Sketchbook
  • Games (Chess, Checkers, Memory, Scrabble, Uno)

Campers should bring:

  • Snacks
  • Lunch (if bringing from home)
  • Water bottle
  • Jacket or extra layer of clothing (optional)

Shapeshifters will provide:

  • Sketchbook/Journal
  • All materials and supplies used in daily workshops
  • Lunch (as requested, for an additional fee)
  • Inspiration, insight, guidance and support

About Our Instructors

Lydia Greer (She/Her): is a widely exhibiting interdisciplinary visual artist, filmmaker, animator and educator. Her work includes multiple-channel media sculpture, hand-made experimental animation with puppets, projected shadow and light on paper sculpture, two-dimensional drawings and paper cuts, and built immersive environments. Through her shapeshifting work, Greer strives to create magical acts of rebellion and experiential bewilderment. Lydia is an Assistant Professor in Animation and Fine Art at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and is the artistic director of Facing West Shadows. She holds an MFA in Art Practice, New Genres/Mixed Media from the University of California, Berkeley, CA. She was a Fellow at The Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She has also taught at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Saint Mary's College of California, among other institutions. https://www.lydiagreer.com/

Gilbert Guerrero (He/Him) is Shapeshifters Cinema's Co-Founder and Director of Operations & A/V Tech. He has spent the better part of the past three decades in and around microcinemas in the SF Bay Area and NYC, as an audience member, volunteer, educator, board member and/or director. He has taught a variety of subjects to young people including web programming, digital animation and experimental sound design at Artists' Television Access, Diablo Valley College and Shapeshifters Cinema. He is also a self-taught, professional chef and brewer whose culinary creations can be experienced every Saturday at Shapeshifters Café. https://gilbertguerrero.com/

Jon Leidecker (He/Him) has pursued the medium of electronic music since the mid-1980's, emphasizing live performance and collaboration. Early works utilized sonic collage and musical appropriation, improvising with recorded sounds to produce a form of metamusic where the pleasure might come from finding just the right unanswerable questions about what might happen next. Recent work investigates the early electronic music's use of feedback and self-playing instruments to frame the medium as a site for questions about the role of automation and technology in society: what kinds of human labor can be safely and productively given over to machines. These questions evolved in tandem with his day job as a Test Engineer from 1998 to 2016, working in succession for Orban, Digidesign and Dolby on various digital products and platforms for musicians, including Pro Tools HD, the VENUE live sound console, and Dolby Atmos. In 2016 he left corporate work to pursue music full time. Current touring projects include Negativland, the Thurston Moore Group, Jennifer Walshe, Zoh Amba, and Cheryl E. Leonard. Talks on the secret histories of electronic music have been presented at Oxford, Stanford, Mills, UC Berkeley and Peabody, and his nine hour overview of sampling and collage, 'Variations', is hosted online by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. Radio remains his home medium, with Negativland's Over The Edge livemix broadcast continuing to emerge out of KPFA FM, Berkeley. https://www.detritus.net/wobbly/index.html

Risa Lenore (She/Her) has been teaching theater, storytelling, creative movement, puppetry and visual arts at elementary schools, preschools and beyond in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 20 years. She is the artistic director, primary puppet and set designer, builder, and storymaker for Possibly Puppets, an experimental and boundary-pushing ensemble that explores the themes of greed, loss, and environmental stewardship through visually-rich, multi-media and performative puppet theatre. She holds a BA in anthropology from Beloit College and attended Jacques LeCoq's school of international Theatre in Paris, France. She is an award-winning costume designer with Theater of Yugen in San Francisco, and continues to use costumery in her work. https://www.possiblypuppets.com/

Cheryl E. Leonard (She/Her) is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales. Leonard uses microphones to uncover and explore micro-aural worlds within her sound sources, and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices she discovers. Her recent work focuses on environmental issues, especially climate change in the polar regions and California and the extinction of species. She has composed for dance, theater, film, and video; designed sounds for exhibits in science museums; and developed works with climatologists, oceanographers, and biologists. https://allwaysnorth.com/

Kathleen Quillian (She/Her) is Shapeshifters Cinema's Co-Founder and Director of Programming. In her own studio practice she works primarily with found imagery, collage and stop-motion animation. Triangulating between natural phenomena, metaphysics and speculative reasoning, her work explores liminal spaces and the collective and individual ways humans understand and engage with the unknown. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has taught workshops on collage animation and pre-cinema optics at Diablo Valley College, California College of Art, The Exploratorium, The Prelinger Library and Shapeshifters Cinema. https://kathleenquillian.com/

Ellie Vanderlip (She/Her) is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker and educator. She is Co-Director of Education and Outreach at Shapeshifters Cinema, on the board of directors at the San Francisco Cinematheque, and maintains a studio at Artists' Television Access. She loves empowering pupils with hands-on knowledge of cameraless filmmaking techniques and has taught her Material Cinema Workshop at the Exploratorium, San Francisco State University, St. Mary's College, the University of San Francisco, and of course at Shapeshifters. Her primary focuses are found footage experimental documentary, material cinema, and expanded cinema performance. https://www.15thavenuefilms.com/

About Shapeshifters Cinema

Shapeshifters Cinema provides a venue and support for contemporary artists working with experimental and artist-made film, video, sound, music and other types of mediated performance. We host screenings and performances by local and visiting artists in our intimate 40-seat theatre and offer workshops on a variety of experimental and DIY moving image and sound production.

Questions/Comments: connect at shapeshifterscinema dot com