Since 2019, projectART has offered Summer camps for Wimberley children. This year they are offering two camps, that will run simultaneously each week from June 1 to August 7 with twice the offerings of previous years. In 2026 there will be 20 camps in all.
In order to accommodate a one-hundred-percent increase in their summer Youth Arts Program classes, projectART’s Executive Director Kristy Peloquin reached out to HippoCampus Learning Center in Wimberley to sublease their site, which includes two classrooms, a shared multi-purpose room, kitchen and green space, for the summer. Peloquin said that ARTSPACE, projectART’s mixed-use gallery and education space, just isn’t large enough to host as many children as the organization would like.
“projectART has realized tremendous growth over the past few years. In 2025, nearly every summer class in our Youth Arts Program filled and waitlisted. In 2026, we’ve doubled the number of summer Youth Arts Program classes to meet the demand for youth art education. However, this meant finding additional space since our gallery ARTSPACE simply can’t hold as many children as we would like to serve. We’re so grateful that the HippoCampus Learning Center has sublet their space to us for our summer classes.”
projectART’s new Education Manager, Lauren Slubar, an educator with experience as a classroom teacher and a Dyslexia Coordinator and Interventionist, joined the team in January and hit the ground running to coordinate the schedules and curricula of 20 instructors.
“I was up for the challenge,” said Slubar. “Our teachers are incredible and came up with a lot of the class ideas, and we made sure to lean into their strengths as teachers or artists. Our first priority was to offer classes for many ages to best serve our families’ needs.”
The projectART team has curated an extensive ensemble of options for students going into Kindergarten through ninth grade.
“We also have worked to make camps accessible to more families with tuition assistance opportunities, thanks to the generosity of our sustaining members and donors,” said Slubar.
For Peloquin and Slubar, the expansion of summer camp offerings signals the growth of the whole program, which results in impacting more youth.
“Children and teens growing up in rural areas do not have access to art schools in their communities like youth in urban communities do,” said Peloquin. “projectART wants to change this reality. We believe that every child—no matter their zip code—deserves access to the transformative power of the arts. Our YouthArts Program provides critical access to arts education for children and teens so they can learn, build skills, gain deeper arts appreciation and be better prepared for careers in the arts, which ultimately benefits the cultural capital of our community. More classes translates into more positive community impact.”
Information and registration for projectART Summer Camps can be found at projectartwimberley.org/programs/classes-camps.
