A selection of comments from our 2025 survey on relaunching Camp Quest UK.
- Our son attended Camp Quest from 2014 – 19 and loved it. We were really pleased there was a camp like it in the UK and, as humanist parents, were keen to support, as well as thinking he would gain a lot from being involved. I genuinely believe it helped shape our son to be the clever, independent, caring, activist adult that he is now. Collecting him from Camp Quest would lead to a several hour blow by blow account of everything he had done and, of course, had really enjoyed.
- I think Camp Quest was transformatory for my son. It introduced him to the idea of a close group of like-minded people who could discuss ideas and act on them, and that set his expectations for what he wanted in the future.
- I remember a couple of days into my first camp really feeling like I belonged. I remember feeling like this was a community completely unlike any I’d been a part of before. I joined a discussion about assisted suicide, and I was too young to even really understand the concept. But I wasn’t excluded or patronised, I was welcomed in. Those experiences of free thought and free discussion, the kind of things you wouldn’t get at school, were always my favourite part of Camp Quest.
- My GCSE results came through during the last Camp Quest. So my parents texted me the results and then I went raft building. I did well in the GCSEs, but I remember feeling like nothing could really go wrong. Because, regardless of the outcome of exams or any of life’s other stresses, I knew everything would work out alright if communities of people this brilliant exist. Also, as well as being surprisingly full of neurodiverse people, there were also a lot of queer people at Camp Quest. I guess this is related to “Promoting social justice and inclusion”. I certainly feel like I met more fellow queer people at CQ than I had in my entire life up to that point. A future iteration of CQ could consciously embrace this diversity.
- Camp Quest always felt like a safe space to share ideas with open minded young people. I was always a “quiet kid” and even at Camp Quest I was one of the quieter campers, but Camp Quest certainly helped bring me out of my shell, for which I will always be grateful.
- I attended two summers at Camp Quest 1.0 and have nothing but praise for the experience. (I don’t remember the exact years, but I think it was early on; the second year had a theme of “memes” and the one the grown-ups started has remained in my brain ever since!). It being a chance to be away from my parents for an extended time was, I feel, very important; though I like my parents and largely share their views even now, being apart from them helped me to develop my own thoughts and ideas without relying on their input and approval.
