HILLTOWN YOUTH PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAM INC
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Mission Statement
Founded in 2010, the Hilltown Youth Recovery Theatre (HYRT) is a year-round after-school program and summer camp offering intensive leadership training and skill building to children and teens underserved by the arts. In 2015 we launched the Recovery Theatre a performing arts experience for young people overcoming trauma, addiction, anxiety, depression and other behavioral health challenges. Our innovative, strength-based, holistic model utilizes trauma-informed, evidence-based best practices that take into account adolescents developing endocrine and nervous systems, include families and social supports and emphasize peer interaction so important to this age group. Through our partnerships with area schools, the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County, the MA Deptartment Of Public Health Bureau Of Substance Abuse Services, the Northwestern District Attorney's Office, the Mass Cultural Council, Matthew Glassman, Andrae Green and other luminaries in the social justice and performing arts communities and by introducing leadership programs, fellowships and internships we are exposing these young artists to what can come next. Opportunities that help them see the world beyond the hilltowns of Western MA while remaining rooted here. Through healing we’re showing that there is a local, national and global perspective on whom you can heal into and what you can become.
About This Cause
"The Hilltown Youth Recovery Theatre is a unique space where teens struggling with addiction and mental health issues are valued as artists, not patients. Part of its strength lays in the fact that it is not a clinic, agency or hospital; it is a theatre-based intervention, which offers young people access to networks of safety and unconditional peer support. Nothing else exists like this in our underserved 30-town rural region. And, frankly, we haven’t seen anything else like it in New England and I’m tempted to say the country. Franklin County was in the middle of a statewide opioid epidemic when the global pandemic struck. Jonathan and his team have been virtual first responders on behalf of our marginalized youth, many who found themselves cutoff and isolated in unsafe homes."—JOHN MERRIGAN, Former State Representative 1st Franklin District, Founding Co-Chair Opioid Task Force Of Franklin County The geographic position of Franklin County off of Interstate-91 have made our communities a prime target for drug trafficking along the I-91 corridor. Nicknamed the “heroin highway,” in the past 3 years the rate of youth prescription drug misuse and abuse has nearly doubled, making substance use in adolescence a critically important problem to address in order to meet the needs of local families. While our target population is underserved at-risk rural youth, a growing number of LGBTQ and young people of color find sanctuary in our programs. Marginalized groups are particularly vulnerable to addiction and the mental health challenges that often drive them. Trans youth and other young people in the LGBTQ community have suicide rates four times greater than their peers and are 181 percent greater risk for developing a full-blown addiction. One of our student-leaders, Sam, an 18-year-old artist now on our board, shared their experiences in the program during a United Way fundraising event: “I found my home with the Recovery Theatre. I was struggling with depression and self-harm. What has impacted me the most is how Hilltown Youth changed theater for me. They use their artistic platform to exceed social norms; as a nonbinary person of color, I learned how to be in my body without shame or guilt. Last summer was my first year in a full-blown leadership role, and it was something that 12-year-old Sam had always wanted, but never thought would come true.” At Hilltown Youth, we believe that the art our community makes can change the world. We know that the process of creating art changes the immediate world for our youth in recovery and has an impact for a lifetime. The ability to disrupt the ways that stigma and representation imprint and tattoo power upon people’s bodies allows for innovative and creative spaces where health and wellness can be performative, visual and inspiring in its approach. As our program of youth leaders and community creators has grown, we have started to attract young people from other marginalized communities such as teens living with developmental and physical disabilities and those struggling with chronic illness. All Hilltown Youth are PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN programs. We incorporate art, music, movement, meditation and yoga to release somatic symptoms of trauma from the body. (B. Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score.) Circus (flying trapeze, aerial fabrics), outdoor adventure (whitewater rafting, zip lining, rock climbing) and Equine Assisted Therapy (EAT), rewire and rebalance the nervous system and cultivate a sense of calm and safety in the body. As does the beauty of the woods, rivers and the natural landscape of our surroundings in the foothills of Berkshires. The organization is student-led not staff driven. Our youth leadership team creates, writes, designs and directs all our spectacles. They facilitate workshops, perform outreach in area schools and hospitals and offer peer to peer support for other emerging leaders struggling with anxiety, depression, substance abuse and related traumas. Being part of something larger than themselves provides young people opportunities to give back, gain confidence, experience agency, repair attachments and build community. It gives them a sense of belonging. We are committed to ensuring all our youth have the resources to meet their basic needs sustainably and with dignity. Our YouthCorps program provides meaningful summer jobs and year-round employment in the creative arts economy for 40+ young people a year. Young people in recovery need more than circus and theater enrichments, even life-altering ones. They need safe, affordable housing, transportation, and jobs. Employing youth is directly in service of our mission. We’re teaching our youth that creating art and building community is a crucial way of contributing to the health, wellness and economic vitality of our towns and the region. Over the past 4 years we've pumped more than $300,000 into the local arts economy. In January 2022, Hilltown Youth secured a long-term lease at the former Heath School (which had since closed in 2017), restoring the building’s place as a supportive cultural hub for my home community. Our co-tenants include public safety (police, fire and rescue), the senior center, the town library and municipal offices. We are offering circus classes for seniors and are working with our police chief to design a trapeze program to help law enforcement and at-risk teens call over the fence to each other. We believe this has the potential to become a national model for reimagining and repurposing rural spaces. This is an opportunity to invest in a real model for transforming rural communities and to support the arts as a tool for social transformation and public health. VOICES FROM THE ENSEMBLE “It never ceases to amaze me how a dozen people, all with messy lives and loads of luggage, have the ability to create the most calming and therapeutic environment for one another. We had the whole building to ourselves, only lit by a total of four lanterns. I was so worry free I lost the concept of time. My only focus was breathing to the music and matching my body movements to everybody else’s. It sounds strange but it’s the best therapy I’ve had in my whole life in comparison to sitting on a couch with my muscles tense and ready to bolt out of the room at any second. After the training, we gathered again in the lantern lit space to put some words into writing”—ALEX SCHMIDT (age 16), alum, current board member “I started Recovery Theater when I was 17. My mom passed when I was 12 from alcohol, and my dad was a heroin addict and rageoholic. I went into DCF. I was lucky. I had an awesome caseworker who sent me to rehab for my own substance abuse issues. That only lasted a week. Afterwards, my school told me about the Recovery Theatre. The first time I flew on the trapeze I knew I wanted to be part of this healthy group. I wanted to grow with these people. My favorite part is the falling. It’s the feeling of release and the adrenaline rush you get when you let go of the bar and fall into the net. The Recovery Theatre was the one constant in my life. It was about proving I could finish something I started. It spoke to the healthy parts of me. I didn’t feel like getting high when I was at the rig. Now I’m 25, work full time and have full custody of my 2- year-old son. I have a whole life now. I wouldn't be where I am right now without that program.”—ALLIE B., alum “The Recovery Theater was a godsend for helping our family support a young lady, newly living with us, who was struggling with a recent heroin exposure. I had no idea where to even start in helping her. The Recovery Intensive provided the perfect combination of both structure and adrenalin rush (a.k.a. trapeze) that kept her connected. We could not have navigated this summer without this program...Little did I know that it would also be a pivotal experience for my son. He struggles with severe anxiety. The week provided him with so many positive and meaningful experiences. Through drama and prose, he was able to find a voice for some of his fears. The balance between being on the edge of panic yet strangely safe at the same time allowed him to sleep and laugh in ways we rarely see. Finally, both kids felt so accepted as human beings yet totally hearing that their addiction and anxiety levels weren’t okay. They heard the reality that those broken parts didn’t have to define them.”—KAM O. (parent) "What the Hilltown Youth Recovery Theatre is doing is taking the youngest, most stigmatized and marginalized members of our community and transforming them into artists, activists and activators and the impact these programs are having on our small hilltown communities is palpable. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s clinical. It’s political. It’s economic and I would even say spiritual." —MATTHEW GLASSMAN, former Co-Artistic Director, Double Edge Theatre, Ashfield MA "Hilltown Youth Recovery Theatre is more than a theater troupe or camp. The program serves youth of diverse backgrounds, lived experiences and gender identities. Based in rural western Massachusetts, the Theater supports a high proportion of disadvantaged youth who otherwise would not have access to arts and culture. Hilltown Youth is a program that sits squarely at the intersection of the arts and humanities, while weaving mental health with a strong sense of social and environmental justice and exploration of the gifts of the great outdoors."—YVES SALOMON-FERNANDEZ, President, Urban College of Boston; Board Chair, Mass Humanities; HYRT parent "Jonathan's background in the fields of dependency and teen programming has helped Hilltown Youth soar to new heights throughout the region. His team's outcomes supporting the struggling youth population in the 413 is staggering."—TARA BREWSTER, Vice President of Philanthropy, Greenfield Savings Bank “You are a shining example of the type of collaboration we want to have with our community partners.”—KELLY STEINER, Former Director United Way of Hampshire & Franklin Counties