Camp Windmill

Sandpit teamed up with Windmill Theatre Co to create an interactive website and learning resource to support ‘Rella’ a theatrical reimagining of Cinderella.

Windmill approached Sandpit to design and build a playful website that would help young people explore the contribution of ‘camp’ to the Australian performance canon. They wanted something that would help students and teachers alike dive deeper into the ideas presented in ‘Rella’ and open up conversations in classrooms about what ‘camp’ is. Camp Windmill leads users through camp’s complex, playful and sometimes contradictory meanings in a colourful and accessible way. 

‘Rella’ starred and was co-created by drag queens and performers Thomas Fonua and Fez Faanana. In the website, they play your Camp Windmill guides, there to answer any questions and make you laugh along the way. It was important when creating Camp Windmill to make sure that the form reflected the content and that nothing ever felt too serious or laboured. The resulting design is playful, surprising, and very very camp.

The structure of the website is playfully inspired by the phrase ‘camp as a row of tents’. It begins at a central kiosk with Thomas and Fez, and then opens up to series of tents. Users can go into the tents to visit a resident ‘camper’ and hear all about what camp means to them. The ‘campers’ include stage icons such as Paul Capsis, Glace Chase, and Windmill’s own Rosemary Myers.