Who We Are...
The Hillsdale Workshop Alliance (HWA) is a collective of independent producers offering creative workshops in and around Hillsdale, NY. Led by both local experts and visiting makers and artists, HWA is dedicated to presenting high-quality, thoughtfully designed workshops set in beautiful surroundings—experiences that appeal to residents and visitors alike.
Once a year, HWA comes together to present the Workshop Experience Weekend, a carefully curated festival of classes and open gardens. The weekend offers engaging, informative, and hands-on learning opportunities that celebrate the season, creativity, and the natural beauty of our region.
Margaret Roach
Margaret Roach has been a leading garden writer for 30 years, at “Martha Stewart Living,” “Newsday,” and since April 2020 for “The New York Times,” where she began her journalism career. She is the author of “A Way to Garden” and two other books. Margaret hosts a public-radio podcast, lectures, and holds tours at her 2.3-acre Copake Falls garden, which she likes to think of as a giant birdfeeder, welcoming a diversity of insect, bird and other animal life.
Matthew White
Matthew White is a long-time interior designer and antiquarian. As many do, he left the city for what he thought would be a quiet country life, only to restore two historic antique buildings in the Hamlet of Hillsdale. There he oversees popular local businesses as proprietor of Hillsdale General Store, a country lifestyle shop, and HGS Home Chef, a kitchen store with two teaching kitchens, where he produces cooking classes led by acclaimed chefs and cookbook authors.
Jenny Elliot and Luke Franco
Jenny and Luke of Tiny Hearts Farm in Copake are farmers, not florists, first. They are also classically trained musicians. The Tiny Hearts team is committed to growing an ever-wider palette of high-quality, healthy-for-the-land, healthy-for-people flowers. Their popular flower shop in Hillsdale has a workroom, where they create flowers for weddings and other events, provide customers with weekly CSA bouquets, and teach workshops on all aspects of practical and creative floristry.
Paul Ricciardi
Paul is co-director of the Ancram Center for the Arts, where he, along with husband and co-director Jeff Mousseau, has created and/or produced 8 years of ground-breaking performance, including Taylor Mac's HOLIDAY SAUCE, THE PLEIN AIR PLAYS, and YOU DON'T KNOW THE LONELY ONE with David Cale, Dael Orlandersmith, and directed by Robert Falls. Paul is the creator and Director of AOH’s Real People Real Stories (RPRS), a program that utilizes a unique approach to support community members in sharing compelling, personal narratives, which is now being utilized by the Taconic Hills Central School District as part of the Elementary School writing curriculum.
Aubrey Lynch
Aubrey Lynch, recently named Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs at American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, looks forward to his regular weekend getaways in the Hillsdale area. A former principal with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and original cast member and former associate producer of “The Lion King,” Aubrey has been Chief Education and Creative Programs Officer at the prestigious Harlem School of the Arts. His philosophy: “The arts aren’t extracurricular; they’re extra-essential.”
Lewis Cleale
Lewis Is the proprietor of the Hudson Valley’s newest artisan fiber-processing mill, Nobletown Fiber Works, producing yarn and fiber products for farmers in the greater tri-state fibershed. For more than 30 years, he has worked on and off Broadway as a professional actor and singer. A country boy from Maine, Lewis has called Hillsdale home since 1998 when he purchased and restored his 1825 Federal home in the hamlet. Presently, Nobletown Fiber Works provides woolgrowers custom processing capabilities but looks forward to opening a retail shop, offering classes in the fiber arts, as well as raising a small flock of the world’s tiniest sheep breed, Ouessant.
Jim and Pam Carden
Jim and Pam own and operate Taconic Ridge Farm and Forgather, event and hospitality properties in Hillsdale. Jim is the founder of The Bell House, Union Hall and Floyd in Brooklyn, and Pam works in advertising in NYC. Natives of Kentucky and Iowa, they feel so at home in Hillsdale and are inspired by all the beauty and creativity in the area.
