Campfire Culture: What Summer Camp Can Teach Us About Organizational Artifacts
Let’s start with a scene: You’re 12 years old. You just got off a bus full of sweaty, nervous kids you’ve never met. And within three days you’re singing songs at breakfast, painting your face for color wars, and swearing lifelong allegiance to your cabin.
What just happened?
Summer camp happened. And whether you realize it or not, it’s a masterclass in culture-building.
Not just the vibe of culture, but the visible artifacts that drive belonging, reinforce values, and shape how people show up.
Artifacts: The Tip of the Cultural Iceberg
In Edgar Schein’s foundational model of organizational culture, artifacts sit at the surface: what we can see, hear, and touch. They include rituals, language, dress code, workspace layout, and behaviors. But underneath these artifacts are the espoused values (what a group says it values) and the underlying assumptions (what the group actually believes).
"Artifacts are the visible organizational structures and processes," Schein writes. "But they can be difficult to decipher because we don’t always know what they mean without understanding the context."
— Organizational Culture and Leadership, Edgar Schein
Summer camp excels because it builds a complete cultural system: artifacts that align with values, and values that reinforce deep assumptions like trust, inclusion, and belonging. And unlike many modern workplaces, it’s done intentionally.
The Camp Culture Stack: A Breakdown of Artifacts That Work
Here’s how summer camp nails the artifact game better than most companies:
🕯️ Rituals
From morning flag ceremonies to nightly campfires, rituals at camp provide structure, meaning, and rhythm. These are moments of connection that teach what matters.
According to anthropologist Victor Turner, rituals function as “communitas” creating liminal spaces where status drops and community forms. In organizations, rituals offer the same potential. As Harvard Business Review notes, “Work rituals can increase team cohesion, reduce stress, and improve performance.”
🧢 Symbols
Every lanyard, cabin banner, and bead bracelet is a symbol. A physical reminder of identity. These items may seem trivial, but they hold weight because they’re connected to emotional memory.
In the workplace, symbols are often underutilized or overly sanitized. But research shows they can play a powerful role in aligning teams and reinforcing culture, especially when co-created. Craft time, anyone?
💬 Language
Shared phrases like “campers first” or “leave it better than you found it” operate as micro-mantras. They set the tone for behavior and build culture from the inside out.
Culture consultant and author Lindsay McGregor writes that “high-performing teams use language as a tool to reinforce values daily.” These phrases become shorthand for how we treat each other, what we celebrate, and what’s off-limits.
🔥 Stories
Every camp has its own folklore: stories about pranks, triumphs, or life lessons that get retold every summer. These stories reinforce social norms and anchor people to a sense of legacy.
Organizational storytelling is an emerging practice in OD and internal communications. Stories are entertaining, sure. But they are also how humans make meaning. Done well, they encode lessons more powerfully than any policy ever could.
🤝 Norms & Behaviors
At camp, there’s no employee handbook. But everyone knows: you cheer for your teammates, you clean up after yourself, you show up for each other. The norms are lived, not laminated.
In contrast, many workplaces struggle with the gap between espoused values and enacted behaviors. Summer camp shows what it looks like when behaviors are modeled, rewarded, and reinforced through every layer of the experience.
What Camp Gets Right (That Work Often Gets Wrong)
Summer camp works because culture is the main event.
Kids are immersed in rituals that build connection.
They’re surrounded by symbols and stories that reinforce purpose.
They’re invited into belonging through the culture.
This isn't accidental. It's culture design. And it works.
So the question becomes: what would it look like if your workplace took culture that seriously?
What if, instead of outsourcing belonging to HR or reducing culture to a poster in the break room, you actually built artifacts that were worth remembering?
Your Culture Needs a Friendship Bracelet Moment
You don’t have to build a ropes course to build culture. But you do need to design for meaning.
That starts with questions like:
What’s one ritual we can introduce to anchor our values?
What symbols or traditions make our team feel proud to belong?
What stories are we telling—and what stories need to be told more?
Camp reminds us that culture isn’t soft. It’s structural. And the right artifacts create identity and belonging.
So go ahead, bring a little camp into your culture. It might be the most strategic thing you do all year.
