Editor's Note: One of the goals of NEPM's Media Lab is to collaborate with the NEPM newsroom and Masslive.com to give high school and college students in Greater Springfield an opportunity to practice the skills needed to become multi-media journalists.
These community leader profiles were written by the 2025 summer cohort of Media Lab youth producers — high school students learning about interviewing, photographing, filming and writing. Of all the articles written this summer four were chosen to be highlighted on the NEPM website homepage.
First up is Media Lab Youth Producer Evelyn Gonzalez's interview with Priscilla Kane Hellweg, director of the Arts Integration Studio in Holyoke.
Priscilla Kane Hellweg is the director of the Arts Integration Studio, which is a creative maker space. She’s been living in Holyoke for 40 years now and also for 40 years she was the director of the nonprofit, “The Enchanted Circle Theater,” which is based in Holyoke. Currently she is a consultant for the Springfield Public Schools.
When Kane Hellweg worked in the nonprofit world, she was working about 60 to 70 hours a week, and so she decided to retire. Yet she wasn’t ready to sit down and relax all day, so she started a small consulting firm.
“But I wasn’t ready to eat bonbons and read all day long. So I started a small consulting firm and that's what the Arts Integration Studio is,” she said.
Kane Hellweg is now working on a program called “Truth Tellers Theater Ensemble," — an intergenerational theater company.
“We are an intergenerational theater company ranging in age from 15 to 70 something. And literally, we have people in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s," she said. "And the focus of our theater work is childhood trauma, foster care, adoption, resilience and healing and storytelling and making positive change in the child welfare system.”
Last year the ensemble performed at the Massachusetts State House. They performed for 80 case workers from the Department of Children and Families and so Kane Hellweg wants to go far and wide with this arts and advocacy program. She said she wants to bring the arts to everybody.
The theater ensemble is a nine-month program that brings a group of people who don’t really know each other together. The program develops an ensemble where they learn to really trust each other, support each other and teach each other.
“It’s very brave and courageous work to talk about trauma, things that have been hard, things that didn’t go the way you wanted and hurt you. And so to be able to build a community where you can tell your story and learn from each other’s stories, you’re not so alone, ” she said.