ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on girls’ rock camps, week-long summer-camp programs in which adult women teach young girls how to play instruments, form bands and put on shows. Subcultures have long been theorized as the domain of the young. Illustrating this connection, studies of the varieties of subcultural participation often use the terms ‘subcultures’ and ‘youth cultures’ interchangeably. Since the first girls-only rock camp, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, opened in Portland, Oregon, in 2001, over two dozen rock ‘n’ roll camps for girls have popped up all over the world. Girls’ rock camps present a new strategy for continued subcultural participation for adult women—educating new generations of girls about women’s music history, feminism and Do It Yourself cultural production. Rock camps provide locations for an explicit transfer of knowledge between women and girls.
