Our Mission

Circle Creative Collective is a nonprofit organization rooted in the Hudson Valley with a mission of preserving and sharing the wisdom and healing of traditional crafts and creativity. We gather in Circle to weave the fabric of community, inspiring people of diverse cultures and backgrounds to remember the lessons and skills of our ancestors, and embrace the wisdom of each of our unique traditions.

The Wisdom of Diversity

Circle Creative Collective has been and continues to be built on our commitment to connecting and inspiring diverse communities by sharing and preserving the wisdom and healing of traditional crafts and creativity.

We work to foster authentic relationships between people from different cultures and backgrounds within our community so that we might better understand people outside our own bubbles. Circle also celebrates the important wisdom and presence of our elders and ancestors. We work to create programs that appeal to an intergenerational, multicultural, and diverse population in our workshops and classes. By making things together in a safe and loving environment, rather than focusing on division and difference, it is easy to find the ways we are similar and learn from each other’s hardships, strengths, and unique paths.

The Healing Power of Creativity

The combination of creativity and community have been proven to have myriad benefits including: helping to build pride, creating better focus, improving self-esteem, helping people to heal from trauma and PTSD, reducing a sense of isolation and loneliness, and more.

Creative expression also has the power to improve well-being by helping us understand ourselves and shifting perspectives that reinforce positive behaviors. Physiologically, creativity has powerful effects on our bodies: reducing blood pressure, bolstering our immune system, improving brain cognition, and fighting inflammation. The arts are transformational and engage our hearts, our minds, and our souls. They have universal appeal and elevate empathy, compassion, and connection on an individual level. In our offerings creativity is utilized as a unifying force, decreasing social barriers and strengthening interpersonal and individual connection.

Our Founding Story

Circle Creative Collective was formed because our founders (Melissa Hewitt, Mirabai Trent, Jenny Wonderling, and Mary Jane Nusbaum) recognized the healing power of creativity in community. As mothers, makers, and creatives who held a deep connection to Nature, each carried a unique and important seed for the blossoming organization that would come to be known as Circle. Conversations about dreams and desires began to rise up between a few women, and then, the gathering in literal circles to explore mediums like thread, dye, masks, and story. Our team works together, bringing our individual skills and gifts, and weaves them, sometimes smoothly, and sometimes authentically searching for better ways to lead as co-creators and partners in a world that challenges notions of non-competition and equitable leadership. Moved by the experiences we co-create, amazed by the reflections and strengths we see in each other and the artisans we work with, we know that our programs can only grow, together, in Circle.

Our Team

Melissa Hewitt

Melissa Hewitt is committed to a life of creativity. She realizes that in finding and trusting her voice artistically she ignites others to find their own voice.

Coming from a long line of printers and creatives, Melissa grew up in a family print shop and later studied papermaking and printmaking. Melissa went to school for fine art, traveled and studied traditional crafts, mask and costume making, and fiber arts from different cultures—and found that many of these traditions were in danger of being lost. These skills have empowered, healed and supported our human ancestors since pre-history and she feels it is her mission to help preserve this wisdom and remind others of the healing power they hold right in their own creative hands.

With her rich background in printing and marketing, she discovered her passion for graphic design and publishing, later establishing a foot-powered traditional letterpress printing business and founding multiple successful publications. Melissa is co-owner and art-director of VISITvortex, an online and print magazine celebrating the treasures of the Hudson Valley.

Melissa is a mother of four children who also see the importance of creating with respect for the Earth and building a brighter future. A Good Work Institute fellow, her work there helped to clarify the mission of Circle Creative Collective. She had always imagined a space locally where people from diverse backgrounds could come together in circle to be together to honor each other’s differences and create. In co-creating Circle Creative Collective that dream has been fulfilled as there is now a space that is dedicated to the healing power of creativity in community.

sibylle jud

Sibylle Jud co-founded Iris with her husband Paul Lichtenberg in 2009. Born and raised in Switzerland, her journey of self-discovery has brought her to New York City at the age of 21, where she was using the camera as a way of looking inward while looking out at the world around. Her quest to go deeper and expand her vision beyond the physical world eventually opened up the world of yoga through immersions and teacher trainings. Her dream of creating a place for people to gather and heal in community, where authentic relationships are at the core of transformation, became real when she and her husband decided to move out of the city to create Iris and start a family. She is the mother of two boys, Teo and Sebastian, who, together with their friends, fill Iris with their joy, laughter, and creativity.

She is a certified Feminine Power transformational coach and facilitator. She is very excited to share the tools she received through the trainings with her community here at Iris and through Circle.

Mirabai Trent

Raised in the Hudson Valley, Mirabai grew up with a deep connection to the Earth and Stars that surrounded her.

Majoring in fashion design, she fell in love with the realm of textiles and the unique qualities of varying countries’ traditions, skills, and stories. When she was just 17, Mirabai began Chrysalis, a circle of sisterhood for teen girls, to help engage her peers in open conversation, creativity and connection. Chrysalis is still going strong today.

After graduating, Mirabai did an intensive program at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA that explored the power and healing of self awareness, creativity and authentic expression in community. From there she contributed to the makings of HATCH Workshop, a center for emerging makers in Stockton, CA.

All the while, Mirabai imagined a school of ancient crafts where people could learn and live side by side which led her to co-found Circle Creative Collective.

With a commitment to learning and preserving cultural crafts, she went on to explore and study in Guatemala, Mexico and Japan. She volunteered with a women’s weaving cooperative owned and run by local Tz’utujil Mayan women and endeavored to learn the complex traditions of weaving, natural dyeing, embroidery, and bead work.

In the past few years she has worked closely with a variety of local nonprofits in addition to Circle, such as the Hudson Valley Current and The Art Effect as a graphic designer and community organizer.

Her desire, deep appreciation and kinship with ceremony and ritual has been very alive for her from a young age. Today, she continues to explore and deepen her appreciation and intimacy with the ancient ways, archetypes and indigenous wisdom teachings that have been preserved all over the world throughout time. Her value of bringing forth the power of creativity in community while invoking the Mystery continues to blossom in her work with Circle.