Welcome to Creativity City. Take a stroll through the town and admire the well-constructed houses, the movie theater, the post office and the library. Just don’t step on the tiny people.

Creativity City is a town designed and built out of boxes by campers at Box City camp at Wynnton Arts Academy. Historic Columbus hosts this camp every summer for kids ages seven to 12. These campers spend a week planning their own city. Each camper is assigned buildings to design and decorate throughout the town.

“It’s the buildings that you need in a community. The library, the post office, a police station, a fire station,” said camper Emma Lipscomb, 11. Toward the end of the week, campers also build their own houses. This is the second year Emma has participated in the camp.

“I just had so much fun last time and I wanted to do it again,” said Emma, who was also running for mayor of Creativity City.

Kelly Britt, 6, agreed.

“It’s really awesome,” he said. showing off the buildings he constructed -- a hotel and a bank. But he’s also put his artistic skills to use creating people to populate the town. “I made a hobo,” he said, pulling a tiny figurine out of his pocket, complete with a minature sack slung over its shoulder.

“My kids love it,” said Amy Mobley. Her two sons have participated in the camp for two years. “It was just something for them to do rather than being stuck at home.”

The campers also learn about architecture and building during the camp. City planners visit to talk to them about the needs of a city and they take a tour of buildings in Columbus to study their architectural styles.

Mobley said her boys are able to pick out architectural styles because of what they learned at camp and that it has helped them in school. “It helps build a foundation and understanding in social studies,” she said.

At the end of the week, each camper gets an award for their efforts and gets to take their buildings home.

Historic Columbus will host one more session of the Box City camp in July.

Toward the end of the June camp, Emma watched a group of other campers try to stabilize a cardboard replica of the Aflac Tower for Creativity City.

“They added a box on the bottom to give it more stability,” she said. Did she have any other advice for future Box City builders?

“Don’t put too much on the top, or it will fall over,” she said.

Sara Pauff, 706-320-4469