For over 20 years, Marsha Dunn ’93 has been on a path of sharing creativity to help others in their own internal journeys. Her multidisciplinary career as an artist, designer, business owner, entrepreneur, and graphic facilitator has coalesced into her current role as Co-Founder and Creative Director of the nonprofit Sequinland Institute, an award-winning gap year program in the coastal woodlands of Georgetown, Maine. The Institute, founded in 2016, provides a space for 18-22 year olds to come together to foster community, connect with the natural world, and consider what it means to live a good life, all while earning college credit.
Marsha attended Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School from kindergarten through Grade 10 before finishing high school in Rhode Island and attending Brown University. In all her endeavors, she says the sense of community and value of creativity that surrounded her at HVS has stayed with her. For much of her career, she has worked as a graphic facilitator, running her own studio and working with organizations including the United Nations, New England Aquarium, and MIT. As a graphic facilitator, she used visuals as a means of deepening learning and collaboration in a group.
“The approach I was trained in was very much about the power of using visuals in facilitation to connect and engage a group, but not necessarily about teaching people how to build their own community through creativity,” Marsha says. “I started exploring, along with some other colleagues, ways to make teaching more integral to our work and we found it very meaningful.”
These values combined with her husband Philip Francis’ experience in college academia to create Seguinland Institute to meet what they felt was a missing element in the educational landscape. “We had an interest in fostering holistic education and creating a space for young people to think about what it means to live a good life individually and collectively, and what the role of nature, creativity, community, and connection is as they determine what direction they want to take.”
The Institute is situated on a woodland property, along with Seguin Tree Dwellings, a for-profit retreat rental venture Marsha and Philip started with his brother and his wife. Cohorts for each term are limited to 24 students to help create a close community and ensure the faculty can give each one support and attention. Students spend much of their time immersed in nature, creative exercises, and rigorous exploration of ideas. Their days are balanced with moments of connection, whether through the experience of collectively cooking and eating together or interacting with people in the local community who are making a positive impact.
As she’s developed the creative program, Marsha says her goal is to bring connection to students’ innate sense of creativity. “It’s both reconnecting and sometimes renegotiating what that relationship with creativity looks like in a way that can really lead to more joy in the process,” she says. “We also explore how our environment shapes the way in which we are creative, and then how we shape our environment through our own sense of creativity.”
Since its inception, over 200 students have gone through the Seguinland Institute. Marsha says that she hopes that all the participants, past and present, take with them an understanding “that the heart of living a good life is the depth and quality of the relationships that you create, and that a sense of creativity can and should be an essential part of all our lives and it manifests in many, many ways, and that they have a sense of hope that they can go and make change in the world.”
Looking ahead, Marsha is excited to continue developing a new artist-in-residency program and program for alumni to complete independent creative projects and intern with a local arts organization. They are also anticipating opening a second campus to meet the demand from young people for experiential, whole person education. If you’d like to learn more about Marsha’s work and the Seguinland Institute, visit their website or register for the Live Info Session with Philip Francis on Wednesday, March 19 at 7pm.
