Arts Integration Studio is committed to creating and producing public art, curricula, and creative teaching tools in multiple art forms and modalities on themes of social, educational, environmental, and cultural relevance.
CURRENT PROGRAMS
Truth Tellers Theater Ensemble
Each Wednesday, as the sun sets in Holyoke, the Truth Tellers Theater Ensemble comes together at the Arts Integration Studio to create, share stories and lived experiences, dispel myths about foster care and adoption, and help raise awareness that will create positive change in the child welfare system.
In the fall of 2023, Arts Integration Studio partnered with the Treehouse Foundation’s HEROES Youth Leadership program to launch Truth Tellers Theater Ensemble. The Ensemble includes an intergenerational, youth-centered group of creative, thoughtful, and motivated people who come together to collaborate in theater-making to share their stories of lived experience with foster care, kinship care, and adoption. This spring, Truth Tellers finished I Was and I Am: Still Here, a performance piece designed to raise awareness and dispel myths about foster care and adoption, and to help create positive change in the child welfare system.
In May, the Ensemble performed at Holyoke High School for 80 students; for the Western Massachusetts Department of Children and Families staff in Holyoke; for Legislators and the general public at the Massachusetts State House, and for a filmed invitational performance at Easthampton Media.
Liz Almonte, a Mount Holyoke senior and AIS associate teaching artist, writes,
“Truth Tellers offers a world of new possibilities for Western Mass teens. The youth have been able to describe who they are in the context of the foster system. Unsurprisingly, they have beautiful opinions of themselves, and they have strong values in community, safety, and well-being. I am excited to continue to see how they grow throughout this process and what kinds of artistic works they will produce.”
TTTE is supported by the Treehouse Foundation and grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (This program is supported in part by a grant from the Easthampton Cultural Council and the Holyoke Local Cultural Council, local agencies, which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency), Scarlet Sock Foundation, the Beveridge Family Foundation, the Irene E. & George A. Davis Foundation, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Massachusetts Afterschool Partnership.
PAST PROGRAMS
Longmeadow Climate Change Perspectives: From Despair to Action, A Digital Storytelling Initiative
On June 9th, 2023, Arts Integration Studio, in partnership with the town of Longmeadow, hosted Climate Change Perspectives: From Despair to Action, the culminating event in our nine month Longmeadow digital storytelling project.
We premiered our new documentary film of the same name, presented an exhibit of intergenerational community stories, and facilitated community conversations aimed at addressing community climate change solutions. The event drew over 60 attendees and speakers including Massachusetts Undersecretary of Decarbonization and Resilience Katherine Antos, Senator Jacob Oliveira, Representative Brian Ashe and officials from the town of Longmeadow.
Climate Change Perspectives is a community wide initiative developed by AIS and Corrin Meise-Munns, Longmeadow’s Assistant Town Manager, as part of the public engagement portion of the town of Longmeadow’s Long Range Plan update, funded by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action Grant program.
Our creative partners for this project include:
Janine Fondon
Assistant Professor
Chair of Undergraduate Communications & Digital Media Arts at Bay Path University
Rob Deza
Photographer & Filmmaker at Deza Studios
PREVIOUS WORK
Storm Drain Advocacy & Art
Connecting Point Episode, 11/23/15
Productions
Priscilla collaborated with Focus Springfield Community Action Television and several artists from Enchanted Circle Theater to direct and produce Open Mind Storytime (2020 – 2021).
Priscilla, Steve and Rachel Kuhn collaborated on many site-based, history plays, produced by Enchanted Circle Theater, for educational and cultural tourism sites, including:
Women on the Move: Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention commissioned by Bay Path University (2017)
A Fiery and Still Voice: William Cullen Bryant at Home, commissioned by the Trustees of the Reservation (2015)
Inherent Dignity: Women Change Makers in the Progressive Era, commissioned by Wistariahurst Museum (2014)
Sojourner’s Truth: “I will shake every place I go to”, commissioned by the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue Committee (2012)
Leah Enters Late: A New Chapter in the History of Yiddish, commissioned by the National Yiddish Book Center (2010)
The Skinner Servants’ Tour: A Living History of Wistariahurst, commissioned by Wistariahurst Museum.(2005)
Between the Canals: The Evolution of a Mill Town, commissioned by Open Square LLC, and winner of the Merit Aid Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2001).
Priscilla collaborated with WGBY, Public Television in Springfield (now NEPM) and Wistariahurst Museum to co-write and produce Creating Holyoke: Voices of a Community (2009).
A Fiery & Still Voice
Sojourner’s Truth
Between the Canals