Shell Lake Arts Center

★★★★★Jerilyn Bitney

This is a wonderful place for middle and high school kids to attend and take the many week-long vocal, instrumental, and even musical production performance clinics held every summer. Kids are brought there on Sundays, and stay in the dormitory on site, and leave on Friday after their evening performance. A large percentage of the instructors are professors of music, and come from universities in different parts of the country; our youngest daughter's vocal jazz instructor was from New Zealand! It's only a three block walk from main street, four blocks to a beautiful sandy beach with lifeguards, and a fabulous way for kids to learn a little independence while getting music education. There are choral, instrumental, and even marching band camps. My husband went there in the late '60s after it first opened, two of our three daughters took classes, and the third worked in the office. Our youngest daughter met her husband there! I cannot say enough wonderful things about it

★★★★★Emmit Richards

I went here for the concert band camp which was a week long and I had a lot of fun. First of all the first day is really laid-back, basically just have to audition, listen to the people talk and then do whatever you want the rest of the night. I will warn you though, if you’re going here for the first time, the days might be kinda long, about 7 hours of classes which kinda is a lot. Also food that is served is actually good food and doesn’t taste like school food which was a plus. Counselors are also really nice and seem to be open to talk to. Teachers are also nice as well and don’t talk too much. East dorms are nice but from what I heard the west dorms are not that great. The main area is also really nice, they have a pool table, ping pong, foosball table, and a lot more stuff. Overall, if you’re going into your first year of this, I would recommend doing concert band since I had a lot of fun and met a ton of great people.

★★★★★Carey Nadeau

Here's how you know your kid is being taken care of: the camp chef attends the final concert and doesn't leave until she's given all the campers hugs or knuckles. 🥰🥰🥰 Great educators, outstanding counselors, and amazing adults come together to make an incredible music experience for kids. Yay shell lake!!! My son had an awesome time here. Thanks for taking such great care of my kid and offering a top notch music production experience!!! 😍

★★★snow 2pea

phenomenal teachers and educational environment. i went for the trumpet camp but there was a huge lack of info and communication, parents called twice and emailed once trying to figure out what to do with me (sick right before camp) and no response. we were instructed to wake up earlier than the other campers to go practice our instruments at the trumpet camp (not a bad thing, but... not communicated prior to visiting the camp). i probably wouldn't have chosen the trumpet camp if i knew i would have to get up at 6:45 rather than 7:45... there were also forced participation activities attached to the trumpet camp, and as a tired recovering sick person i did not enjoy that. combined with many other commuters being older than me, i thought the normal camp activities with the younger my-age campers seemed more fun. if only these activities were optional... the food staff and, well, food, are great. don't forget to say thank you!!! the cafeteria and main building are infested with spiders though... the counselors are very nice too but i wish i got to spend more time getting to know them outside of classes (forced participation activities forced me away from counselors) and the dorms. the dorms. this was the main contributing factor for my rating. they are outdated, understandably. but also probably not sealed correctly. i had a multitude of spiders haunting my room and they were too fast to kill. don't leave your luggage on the floor because that's where a lot of the bugs go. the ceiling looks like someone took a bb gun to it. the panels aren't all aligned correctly leading to a not very pleasant experience looking at it at night. there are also safety lights outside, and combined with the thin curtains... the rooms are basically fully lit at night because of the age of the building, it also smells.. musty? i dunno. the entire complex's clear abuse by teenagers of the past screamed "this is why we can't have nice things". none of the drinking fountains work in the dorms, so you have to refill water bottles in the abnormally short bathroom sinks. i don't have any complaints about toilets or anything, just follow their 5-second instructions... the counselors also commented on how the locks on the doors often break since they are quite old, so be careful the west dorms are also probably worse as they have more bugs and more animals in the ceiling so bring some sort of bug deterrent that plugs into a wall if i was a commuter and came here as a day camp, my experience would have been greatly improved but i lived too far away to get there by 6:45 am overall, my experience was not improved by being sick the day prior of arriving. the lack of internet service was also irritating when trying to contact parents throughout the week to let them know how i was doing but that isn't the organization's fault. i learned a lot about life and my instrument here, i heard the jazz camps here are much better. i won't be returning for a while but i will definitely apply what i learned here to my playing since there were a lot of important lessons taught.

★★★★Google U

Great to have an Arts Center in Shell Lake . Live performances at the lake as well. Natural setting near nature trail/