The World Wide Camp Makers team have been busy in Scotland, Dorset and Chile! But how did it all start?
The owner of a castle in Scotland was organising a festival, but was very concerned that the grounds would be left in a state like this. He would need the castle to be ready to open to visitors at the end of the weekend festival. He needed a team who could set up the camping aspect of the festival so that it could run in a sustainable way.
A team who know just how to set up a good camp have a long history of using tents and know all about how they have developed. We had some out of Mantle training from Mr Kieran on how to pitch a tent. It was great fun and needed good cooperation.
The World Wide Camp Makers packed up their lorries and vans and headed off to Scotland. They had a plan for how they would set out the tents, the VIP area, the dog friendly area and the children’s zone. They had plenty of bins and recycling points and even spent a lot of their time making sure litter wasn’t left around.
There was a LOT of rain over the weekend of the festival and the castle owner would not allow us to drive our lorries onto the grass as it would be churned up and that would not be good for visitors to see. We had to convince him that we had special mats to lay on the grass to drive over and we packed all of our equipment away. The festival was a success!
We were in a real rush to pack all of our equipment away back in the warehouse as the Health and Safety Inspector was due to visit.
She wasn’t happy with a few things - including the wet tents being folded away in their bags without a chance to dry.
We paused the Mantle story so that we could set up a science investigation. We tried to find the best place to dry fabric quickly - the fabric represented the tents. Using a hairdryer was best. Then the fabric dried quite quickly outside - we think that although it wasn’t sunny, the wind must have helped.
We took this knowledge back into the Mantle story and dried the tents before the re inspection.
We also spent some time looking at the climate of the UK - was this rain usual for Scotland and would it be so rainy and cold in Dorset at our next job?
We then received a voice mail from the Location department of the BBC. They were going to be filming in a secret location with top actors and actresses and would need a camp to be set up as there wouldn’t be any accommodation nearby. They were sending us a few photographs of the area and if we were interested we had to contact them.
Well of course we were interested so we rang them to find out more. We would need to set up a camp for around 100 people - actors and crew, for about a month. Yes it would be in a desert, but to find out more we would have to sign a non disclosure agreement.
We used different maps, geographical landscape, countries and climate to work out that we were going to a very dry place. However, we did discover that it isn’t as hot as other deserts we think of and does get cold at nighttime. We would need to be prepared for the climate and so got packing.
After a 14 hour journey, we arrived in Chile, it still had a 1 and 1/2 hour minibus journey deep into the desert.
Fortunately, we had emergency desert survival kits under every seat in the minibus (which we had made earlier out of the Mantle story!)
The driver asked if we could take a detour to the village where his family lived as he was worried about them in the storm. We really wanted to get to the film location, but we did agree.
The villagers were so friendly and allowed us to shelter in their homes with them or in the minibus in a sort of barn like building.
We represented the dust storm using drama - it was really loud and quite frightening! Thank goodness these storms are rare although parts of the Atacama desert can be very windy. Eat the end of the storm everyone was safe but the power lines were down, everything was covered in dust and some damage had been done to vehicles and buildings. Would we stay to help clear up or would we insist we travel on to the film location?
We had a fantastic meeting - led very well by one of our team. We actively listened to each other, made suggestions and came to a decision very professionally.
The meeting led to half of the team helping the villagers and half continuing on to the film location. However, when they arrived they discovered that their equipment was covered in dust and blown around by the storm. So both teams had a big clean up to do!
Will we be ready for when the actors arrive? Nighttime in the Atacama desert is cold so there needs to be good shelter available for everyone…