PCCUA invites public to Celebrate America performance Thursday
Forty-six PCCUA students took the stage at Lily Peter Auditorium in a free America 250 showcase led by six instructors and assistants on the Helena campus.
Elizabeth Hensley, Mollie Higgins, Melinda Beith, Paulette Parker, Marley Vincent and Samira Scaife guided 46 Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas students through Celebrate America: 250 Years, the college’s annual Workshop in the Arts showcase at Lily Peter Auditorium on the Helena campus. The free performance was set for Thursday at 6 p.m. at 1000 Campus Rd. in Helena and was open to the public.
PCCUA said the show capped a summer camp-style arts program for young people and served as the public performance for what the students learned during the workshop. The America 250 theme tied the program to the 250th anniversary of the United States, but the local value was immediate: Helena families got a campus-based arts event built around children, not just spectatorship, with music, movement and visual expression on one of the largest stage spaces in town.
The workshop has become a recurring part of PCCUA’s summer calendar. In 2024, the college said the program ran June 3-27 for students entering grades 3-12 and included art, hip-hop dance, drama and music. That year’s enrollment cost was $100, making the workshop one of the more accessible arts options for Phillips County families looking for structured summer programming on campus.
The program’s reach also showed up in the college’s own enrollment news. PCCUA described its 2025 Workshop in the Arts enrollment as record-breaking, underscoring the demand for arts instruction in a college system that serves eastern Arkansas from Helena-West Helena to DeWitt and Stuttgart. Lily Peter Auditorium, which has a listed capacity of 1,132, gives the college a space large enough to turn that demand into a public performance rather than a closed recital.
PCCUA has used the Helena auditorium as a public showcase before. In 2023, Workshop in the Arts campers presented a 1960s-themed musical and art exhibit there, again opening the work to the community. This year’s Celebrate America theme extended that pattern, placing young performers, college instructors and families in the same room for a performance that linked arts education with a visible campus presence in Phillips County.
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