Event Ticket Options
NOTE: Registration is a two-step process for those that want a private room. First, select your event ticket (commuter, residential, or camping) and the program fee will be added. If you’d like upgraded lodging (a private room instead of the dorm or cabin included with the basic on-site event price), you will then be directed to our Cloudbeds to complete your accommodation selection. All rooms are available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have mobility concerns and need assistance finding an accessible room, please contact our front desk.
Camping – $270
Commuting – $260
Residential – $370
To help keep program costs accessible, beds will not be made up in advance. Participants will make their own beds using the sheet stacks we provide, or they’re welcome to bring their own bedding if they prefer. Thank you for helping us keep this program affordable for everyone.
Creativity as Countermeasure
October 2-4, 2026
What happens when we understand creativity as a potent mechanism for saying NO to the oppressive status quo – which opens the door to YES for something better? What is creativity and why does it matter, given the current state of the world and/or the current state of our personal lives? What can it move, heal, elevate, transform, prevent, end, or help?
How and why does our culture undermine it, and at what cost?
Join Western Mass. artist and creativity teacher Dana Wilde for a catalyzing weekend of exploring these questions together through lively conversations, guided writing & art activities, and more. Leave with a refreshed appreciation of your own and other’s creativity as a defining aspect of our humanity that must be brought from the sidelines to the forefront. Space limited to 10 people.
Website >> inner-studio.com
Instagram >> @wildecard
__________________________
BIO
Dana Wilde is an artist devoted to creativity as a healing force and a spiritual practice tied to being a cycle-breaker. Drawing, collage, handwriting, and printmaking are her primary forms. She also crafts supportive, catalyzing group experiences for people who want to reconnect with their own creativity, or find camaraderie with others in trying to prioritize it amidst the conflicting realities of modern life.
In Spring 2026, one of Dana’s pieces was published in Contemporary Collage Magazine (UK) Issue #8, print and digital. It’s from her new body of work called Decontextualized, a series of about 40 abstract collages that mark a major artistic pivot. In 2025, she was awarded a $5,000 Creative Individuals Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Best known for her early body of mixed media drawing work Spirit Portraits (Northampton, 2000s-10s), her art studio + teaching space Inner Studio (Easthampton, 2015-2019), and playing drums in the “witch grunge” indie rock band Ex-Temper (2016-2023), Dana has been shaped by and making an artistic imprint upon Western Massachusetts for most of her life.
Dana
This weekend is for:
- Artists of all kinds — writers, musicians, visual artists, etc
- Blocked, aspiring, or late-blooming artists
- Therapists and helping professionals
- Social-justice-oriented people who know that there is an active relationship/conversation between our inner world and the outer world.
- Creatives feeling ambivalent, irrelevant, or derailed by current events in the world at large or in their own communities