Tell me about... The wonders of Starcamp

Aileen O’Grady is the managing director of Starcamp, the Carrigaline company  hosting camps right across the country

So what’s the background to Starcamp?

Star camp is now running 15 years. The whole idea of Starcamp was about self-esteem and confidence through performance. A lot of is based around building the children’s confidence without them even knowing - whether it’s doing a news and weather TV report, comedy, magic the same – effectively it’s public speaking. 

I started out working on the idea in 2007 and the first star camps were in 2008. I started it working out of the spare bedroom in our house in Carrigaline, with some help from my mother. We appeared on Dragon’s Den in 2013 and then they got on board (The Dragons invested €30,000 in return for 10% of Star Camp, Aileen subsequently bought them back out). My husband is an accountant and after we appeared on Dragon’s Den, he got roped in then too! The first year we did Starcamp in 2008 we had about 2,000 children at camps. Now we have just over 30,000 plus Easter Camps.  We’ve just moved into a new office in Carrigaline and now we have 14 people working there. Over the summer we will have 450 staff working at camps around the country.

How many children will attend this year?

We have 270 camps nationwide and will have 45 Cork camps. We’ll have 5,000 kids from across Cork attending camps. We have camps in Bandon, Bantry, Carrigaline, Clonakilty, Kinsale, Macroom, and Skibbereen, with more camps all across Cork City. Some towns have more than one camp and some camps are a few camps are full so there is actually a waiting list. We have a 55 to 60% return rate.

What’s the format?

The camps run from 9.30am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday. The camps are for kids aged 4 to 12 years and are then subdivided by age. There’s so many different things for the kids to do over the week, and obviously it’s completely different depending on the age – for example there’s things like a Teddy Bear’s Picnic for the smallies but then for the older kids there’s things like ‘Make your own TV show’.

It’s a really busy week, there’s outdoor games, a talent show, super hero day, magic tricks, arts and crafts, dancing … that’s just part of it. We have a new section which is life skills. We’ve worked with psychologists and a paediatric consultant, and he spoke about children being comfortable again after covid. Life skills could be anything from a decent handshake to dealing with losing.  

Can you give us a little sneak peak of what the kids will be enjoying?

We’ve a really good programme this year. This year the theme is all around resilience, and that goes with our ethos of building confidence. 

Matilda the movie was a big hit and Alisha Weir, who played Matilda, got on board with us this year. She has made a video message for all the kids on the camp. 

We also have Cillian O’Connor, who came second in Britain’s Got Talent involved in our magic section. Cillian actually spent four years going to Starcamp in Meath. 

This year we have also introduced a merchandising side to Starcamp with hoodies, caps, and the CDs, and the response to that has been unbelievable.