Revolutionary in its conception, the Activities Program features artisans and teachers—specialists in their fields, and not trained as clinicians—who work with individuals and groups, opening possibilities for creative expression and the development of new skills.

You can take advantage of individual instruction and workshops in fiber arts, woodworking, ceramics, and visual arts in a dedicated studio space on Main Street, Stockbridge. Called “The Lavender Door,” the historic building is located beyond the main campus of Riggs, in the center of Stockbridge.

Painting has been part of the Austen Riggs Center patient program since 1949, when art classes were first offered weekly in the shop by Mrs. Peggy Worthington Best—still held in the same painting studio today. The program found new life with the arrival of painter and instructor Leo Garel in 1958. Leo, an accomplished artist, remained at Riggs until his death in 1999 and left a lasting impact on the Lavender Door gallery and the painting program. His once-a-week classes became a meaningful part of many patients’ experiences, with some returning years later for his guidance. As the 1969 annual report notes, “Leo Garel Day has been changed to Friday. There is always a special feeling about the Shop when Leo is teaching.” In 1974 alone, 48 patients worked with Leo, and 37 exhibited their work—a remarkable proportion of the community at the time.

Today, the painting studio continues to thrive under the guidance of artist and instructor Chalice Mitchell. In the studio, Chalice helps participants explore their ideas, refine their painting and drawing skills, or simply play with materials. This creative process often leads people to confront perfectionism or frustration, offering opportunities to practice acceptance and curiosity. Many start fresh, experimenting freely, while others come with studio experience and use the space to deepen their practice, move through creative blocks, or pursue new directions. Chalice supports all levels—whether it's learning techniques, developing a concept, or overcoming artistic obstacles.

Chalice also oversees the Lavender Door Gallery, which features artwork by Riggs community members and is open to the public. She helps students prepare for both solo and group exhibitions, guiding them through the logistics—and emotions—of sharing their work with the world.

The Fiber Arts program, the oldest discipline in the Activities Department, has evolved into a vibrant, welcoming studio space where students can immerse themselves in color and texture. A world apart from the early ‘sweat shop’ look of looms crammed together and mandatory quotas on output, the studio invites students to cultivate their interests and talents, recognizing that creating artwork is its own form of healing. In the Fiber Arts studio students experience the comfort of working with fibers with repetitive processes that can become a meditative practice. Through their mutual love of fiber and process students build strong interpersonal bonds and a sense of community. The Fiber Arts program has expanded to include not only weaving, but knitting, sewing, quilting, embroidery and jewelry. Our current Fiber Arts Instructor, Jill Gibbons, has also introduced basketry, dye work and surface design.

The Drama Group was formed under the guidance of William Gibson, the playwright best known for The Miracle Worker and husband of Riggs clinician Margaret Brenman-Gibson. Under Gibson’s direction, in 1952 the patients performed Thorton Wilder’s “Pullman Car Hiawatha” and Sartre’s “No Exit.” in the theater that we continue to use to this day. In 1970 Jayne Mooney Brookes took over the program and oversaw a renovation of the space as well as a revitalization in the interest in the theater. The company performed classics, one act plays and new productions to sold out crowds of members of the local community and Riggs patients and staff. In the 1990s, Kevin Coleman, the Director of Education at Shakespeare & Company became the theater director at Riggs, and for the last thirty years has overseen a program of plays that engages staff, patients, and the community. Coleman was invited by former director of the Erikson Institute, M. Gerard Fromm, to join the Riggs community. The connection with Shakespeare & Company has been further enriching, allowing the patients to work with experts in the field and actors and professionals from the theater to work in an environment where the focus is on the work itself, the art form, and not the business of theater.

In the theater program, patients work with community actors, including professional actors from Shakespeare & Company. As patient actors learn their lines and come to inhabit the roles they take up, they have the opportunity to explore a wide range of human emotions and complex interpersonal relationships. They bring their bodies, voices, intellect, imaginations, creativity, and choices to the theater and learn to survive success and failure with each other and the audience. Building productions from the ground up creates a deep sense of belonging and community for all who participate. The stories that actors bring to life are engaging, entertaining, and challenging—and of necessity the theater must be a warm playful environment where patients can take a deep dive into stories and work together to create something meaningful.

Ceramics was one of the initial studios in the Activities Program conceived by Joan Erikson in 1950, with its first artist, Franc Epping, teaching sculpture and clay modeling. By 1972, there were two part-time ceramics instructors from different disciplines, and the program had outgrown its kiln and shelf space.

Ceramics has remained a major part of the Lavender Door, with Michael McCarthy serving as the ceramics instructor at Austen Riggs for over 16 years. According to Michael, most of the students he works with have not touched clay since childhood. Students in the studio are encouraged to try something new, even though the role of being a beginner may seem arduous.

The pottery studio offers an opportunity to work with a material that is amazingly malleable. Students can pinch, squeeze, coil, sculpt and carve clay, just to name a few methods. There is no hierarchy or wrong way to work with clay. It is McCarthy’s hope that the ceramics studio offers a safe and welcoming space for students to feel comfortable working both individually and in a community with other students.

Importantly, in the Shop, individuals are called students rather than patients. As McCarthy explains, “The role of student-artist is a powerful alternative to the role of patient, underscoring that capacities, especially creativity, exist no matter how much someone is suffering.”

Woodworking was a fundamental part of the shop even before Joan Erikson arrived in 1950. The shop followed the structure set forth by Austen Fox Riggs in the early 20th century. The hours were strict, tools were kept under lock and key, and patients were expected to produce pre-determined objects. As patients began to engage with woodworking differently, the wood shop developed into what we know today, an open space for patients, as students, to work with materials under the instruction of an expert artisan.

Jim Markham, woodworking instructor at the Lavender Door, describes working with wood as transformative. He described it as “a satisfying experience to start with a rough and splintery piece of wood and through a series of processes to make it silky smooth like glass. It shimmers, glistens and magic happens.” In the woodshop students start with a mental image of something and go through the steps of planning and fabrication using math, visualization, and sequential thinking. Jim collaborates with each student moving from “I have this idea in my head” to “how do we make this thing?” The woodworking student is manifesting something beautiful through a series of tangible, concrete, physical actions and learning ways of thinking and being that have pertinence beyond the woodshop to life in general.

The nursery school at the Austen Riggs Center was founded in 1950, and later Joan Erikson described the motivation for doing so: “The nursery school, we thought, would offer the patients an approach to the experience of childhood as observers and as participant teachers. With children they could, through empathy, reexperience what it feels like to be four or five years old.”

Paula Meade, the director of the nursery school from 1971-2012, wrote a history of the program in 2001 noting, “In the course of a school year we all change—children, interns, volunteers, teachers. We change because we learn...It is from that new starting place that we move and begin to grow once again.”

Today, the nursery school is run by Sarah Muil, a director and educator, along with two full-time educators and it continues to be a place where patients, taking up the role of teacher’s aides, can make connections that help them in their recovery. The nursery school is now Reggio Emilia-inspired, meaning its philosophy is deeply connected to families and the community. Patients, as teachers' aides, integrate into the classroom and become part of the team of educators working alongside the children to scaffold their experiences. As teachers’ aides, patients have the opportunity to exercise their competence, learn about early development, make meaningful connections, and have some fun. Witnessing young children express their feelings and work out conflicts illuminates the developmental process and can enrich patients’ self-understanding.

When the Whitman Manor, which is now the Medical Office building, was purchased by the Austen Riggs Center in the early 1950’s, it came with a greenhouse on the property in an unfortunate state of disrepair. Ernest Gray, who had been teaching woodworking since 1925, took up the rehabilitation of the neglected building along with the help of many patients. Together, patients and staff worked to create a much-improved Greenhouse and a successful organic vegetable and flower garden that supplied food and flowers to the kitchen as well as to the local community. Patient Greenhouse assistants tend to the greenhouse plants as well as the outside gardens, create fresh bouquets for the dining room tables, and care for the houseplants in the patient residences. 

Over the last 75 years, the Greenhouse has continued to offer patients the opportunity to learn about horticulture, to be physical and to be curious, as well as a place to retreat and enjoy a place of beauty on the property. Renovation projects to preserve the original structure of the property over the years have allowed the Greenhouse to be a successful program. Jen Morse, the current Greenhouse instructor, describes the Greenhouse as a place where in addition to learning a new skill, students learn life lessons through making mistakes with plants and learning to tolerate inevitable failures as a result. Patients who use the program may arrive with no horticultural experience, but they do leave with a newfound desire to nurture plants, having experienced the powerful journey of bringing a seed to harvest.