Benny Blanco, Camp, and the Courage to Try

What if one of the most important things camp gives a child is the courage to try something before they know whether they’ll be good at it? Benny Blanco is a great example.

Today, Blanco is a Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, artist and bestselling author who has worked with some of the biggest names in music. But long before the hit songs and recording studios, there was summer camp.

As a kid, Blanco attended camp for many years. Camp became a place where he could explore his love of music and, importantly, share it with other people. He performed and even hosted a camp radio show under the name “Ebba Ebba.” Think about what that means.

A kid with an interest in music had a place to get behind a microphone. To perform. To experiment. To put himself out there. And he’s continued putting himself out there and taking chances throughout his life and his career. Camp is full of moments like that.

A child who has never sung in front of anyone gets up on stage for the first time. A camper tries out for a team without knowing whether they will make it. Someone volunteers to lead an activity, audition for a show, learn a new skill or take on a role they have never had before.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

And that is part of the magic.

At camp, kids have the opportunity to discover that failure is not the opposite of success. It is part of learning how to become more confident, capable and resilient.

That idea is at the heart of Blanco’s new book, which explores failure, rejection, risk-taking and the importance of continuing to put yourself out there. His message is simple: you have to be willing to try, even when you might not get the outcome you hoped for.

It is a message that sounds a lot like camp.

Camp gives kids room to practice being brave.

Not necessarily the big, dramatic kind of bravery. The everyday kind.

• Bravery can be raising your hand.
• It can be walking into a cabin where you don’t know everyone yet.
• It can be trying waterskiing for the first time, auditioning for the camp play, joining a new team or learning a song in front of the whole camp.
• It can be hearing “not this time” and deciding to try again tomorrow.

And perhaps most importantly, camp gives kids the chance to do all of this away from the expectations and labels they may carry at home or at school. They can try on new versions of themselves. They can discover interests they didn’t know they had. They can surprise themselves.

• Maybe a camper who never thought of themselves as a performer discovers a love of the stage.
• Maybe a quiet child finds their voice.
• Maybe someone who is afraid of failing learns that it is okay to laugh, try again and keep going.

Benny Blanco’s story is a reminder that those seemingly small camp experiences can matter long after the summer ends. The kid who once called himself “Ebba Ebba” on a camp radio show eventually built a career by continuing to experiment, take chances and believe that there was something worth putting out into the world.

As Blanco shares on his Instagram: “Nobody likes to fail. But you’re gonna fail. I fail everyday. I fail constantly. We gotta get comfortable with failure. It’s not an embarassing blemish that’s going to be on our past or our future forever. It’s just a part of life. Of getting where you wanna go. It happens to everyone.”

We don’t know what a child will take away from camp. Maybe it will be a new skill. Maybe a new interest. Maybe a new confidence. Or maybe it will simply be the willingness to try.

Because sometimes, the most important thing a child learns at camp isn’t how to do something perfectly. It’s that they are brave enough to try it in the first place.