The Grand Mas­ter will be re­mem­bered and rein­ter­pret­ed by par­tic­i­pants of Queen's Hall The­atre Camp 2010 at Tay Lay Lay with Kitch, a full-fledged pro­duc­tion to­day, from 5 pm, at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. For three weeks, since Ju­ly 5, 80 chil­dren be­tween the ages of sev­en and 13 have been tu­tored in the dis­ci­plines of steel­pan, dra­ma, de­sign, dance, voice and, for the first time, yo­ga–all while be­ing ex­posed to the works, life and ge­nius of Ald­wyn Roberts, The Lord Kitch­en­er.

The the­atre camp has been staged with­out in­ter­rup­tion since its in­cep­tion in 1986 and con­tin­ues to be the flag-bear­er of the Hall's com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­gramme. Con­ceived 24 years ago by the Pa­trons of Queen's Hall as a tool to de­vel­op greater cul­tur­al aware­ness and skill among young peo­ple, the camp has evolved in­to an in-de­mand, sol­id arts pro­gramme. Its cul­mi­nat­ing con­cert has tra­di­tion­al­ly of­fered stu­dents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their artis­tic dis­cov­ery. "We saw it as a way to fos­ter love and re­spect for the per­form­ing arts and to groom an au­di­ence," ex­plained Mar­garet Wal­cott, the camp's co­or­di­na­tor.

Through­out its ex­is­tence dance ed­u­ca­tor No­ble Dou­glas has been artis­tic di­rec­tor. One of the an­nu­al event's main fea­tures is its fo­cus on the ac­com­plish­ments of spe­cif­ic cul­tur­al icons. An­dre Tanker, Bob Mar­ley, Boogsie Sharpe and Pe­ter Min­shall are among fo­cal artists in pre­vi­ous years. This time around the pro­lif­ic out­put of 11-time Road March cham­pi­on, Lord Kitch­en­er, was brought in­to fo­cus for par­tic­i­pants a decade af­ter his death. Wal­cott em­pha­sised that in a con­text in which chil­dren are bom­bard­ed by for­eign cul­ture forms and celebri­ties, the camp is an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty to fos­ter aware­ness about our re­gion­al and lo­cal art forms and he­roes. She de­scribes as "amaz­ing" chil­dren's re­sponse to learn­ing about their own.

Yvonne Roberts-White, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Queen's Hall, added that Queen's Hall is proud to part­ner in the ef­fort be­cause it sup­ports the in­sti­tu­tion's goal of nur­tur­ing the coun­try's artis­tic and cul­tur­al life. In its 2010 edi­tion, the camp fea­tures tu­ition in steel­pan by Dougie Red­don; dra­ma by Saman­tha Pierre; de­sign by Lari Richard­son; dance by Kwasi Romero; voice by Ja­nine Ro­mano; and, yo­ga by Lor­raine O'Con­nor. The The­atre Camp em­ploys an in­for­mal work­shop ap­proach to learn­ing that cou­ples small groups with hands-on train­ing from lead­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the per­form­ing arts. "They learn on the ground, not from books," Wal­cott not­ed of the train­ing process. "This is such a sim­ple way to ad­dress both arts ed­u­ca­tion and cul­tur­al mem­o­ry."