RENSSELAERVILLE, NY · EST. 1924

The willingness to not already know

A campus for the curious

A historic nonprofit retreat and arts campus hosting world-class institutions, leaders, and creatives — to tend the commons.

Visit or Apply to Host

Hilltown commons

THE COMMONS

A curriculum of gatherings.

Programs designed for the kind of learning that requires other people.

  • Our flagship gatherings. We bring together thinkers, practitioners, and curious minds who rarely share a room to sit with the hard questions in community. Full immersion in the land, the programming, and the characters of the Hilltowns.

  • Open-registration workshops hosted by experts and community leaders. Access to grounds and farm-fresh meals included. Come for a day, or a week. Leave with a honed skill and renewed perspective.

  • Film screenings, local fundraisers, pub nights, and live music. Open to all. Just show up. The kind of evening where strangers become neighbors.

  • Foundational retreats for organizations with something to align, advance, or explore. Get your people in the same room on different land. Full and partial campus buyouts available.

  • Residencies for writers, musicians, printmakers, and makers. Time, space, and the accumulated quiet of 90 protected acres. Open applications.

  • Exclusive bookings for weddings and milestone events on 90 acres of protected land. Heritage residences, a 180-person theater, and a pub in the original carriage house.

Work With Us

A 'commons' is shared ground made fertile by all who show up and tend to it. Hilltown Commons is protected by a permanent conservation easement, held in trust for the people and communities curious enough to find it.

The oldest technology for change is a room full of people.

1924

A century ago, in a post-World War I period of reckoning, this place began as a radical act of openness— a living room thrown open to communities pulling apart at the seams.

The founding instinct was countercultural yet simple: people gathered on shared ground can find common ground.

History has a way of repeating itself. The antidote remains the same.

ORIGINS

OUR COMMON GROUND

FIVE HERITAGE RESIDENCES

Vintage wallpaper, hilltop views —>

Ninety acres of protected silence in the Upper Hudson Valley. Heritage residences, a 180-person theater, a pub in the original carriage house. Each space a different chapter of the same century-long story — preserved and re-tended for the questions of our time.

RE-WILDED, PROTECTED LAND

Protected land & wildlife —>

THE CAMPUS
ONSITE RESTAURANT

Farm to table meals & natural wines —>

DEPTH

Micro instead of macro

We work small because the macro problem is solved at the micro level — through the accumulated weight of real gatherings, between people.

CURIOSITY AS A PRACTICE

We don't view curiosity as a personality trait. We view it as a communal practice — not intrinsic, but honed. It requires humility and the courage to step outside of certainty.

HUMILITY

The willingness to not already know.

Curiosity asks us to set down certainty long enough to encounter what's actually in front of us — a person, a question, a season.

PRESENCE

Shared physical ground.

Distance closes when bodies share a room. The screen is not the threshold. The threshold is the door.

METHODOLOGY

Every living room that opens after ours — that's the movement.

Curiosity, practiced together in shared physical space, is one of the most effective tools we have for rebuilding what has been lost.

The macro problem gets solved at the micro level — through depth.

Those conditions don't happen by default. They have to be built and tended. That's what we build toward.

THE MOVEMENT

OPEN FIELD

• WE ARE A NONPROFIT •

As a 501(c)(3), every dollar has a destination. Here’s where it lands →

HOW WE (RE)GENERATE REVENUE 

EDUCATIONAL INCOME

workshops, retreats, convenings, and artist residencies are offered at all-inclusive package rates that cover instruction, lodging, and farm-fresh meals. This qualifies as related educational income.

PRIVATE EVENT INCOME

workshops, retreats, convenings, and artist residencies are offered at all-inclusive package rates that cover instruction, lodging, and farm-fresh meals. This qualifies as related educational income.

COMMUNITY PUB NIGHT

workshops, retreats, convenings, and artist residencies are offered at all-inclusive package rates that cover instruction, lodging, and farm-fresh meals. This qualifies as related educational income.

FOR INSTITUTIONS & leaders

Convenings, team off-sites, partner residencies. Full and partial campus buyouts available.

Convenings Link —>

Offsite Link —>

Partner / Apply to Host

FOR VISITORS

Workshops, week-long retreats, artist residencies, community pub nights. All-inclusive packages with farm-fresh meals from local growers.

Workshops link -->

Pub Link —>

Artist in Residence Link —>