We are excited to share with you highlights from 2022 and celebrate the accomplishments and growth of our students, community members, partners and team. From expanding partnerships and programming to launching new summer camps, and expanding our teams, it has been a year of growth, relationship building, and campus activation for Cobscook Institute. We are grateful to everyone who has been a part of this journey with us and we look forward to what the future holds.

Hosted over 350 stays in Heartwood Lodge, and the campus served as homebase for creative retreat, placed-based learning, and organizational planning including:

• 6 University Placed-Based Experiential Learning & Field Schools including University of New Brunswick & University of New England’s Downeast Coastal Archeology Field School, University of Maine Wildlife Biology Field School, and Dartmouth Environmental Studies Marine & Forest Ecosystem Immersion 

• Festivals and Conferences: Down East Spring Birding Festival & Iota Short Forms

• Retreat, Rest, Create: Experimenting with providing artists, educators, community organizers spaciousness for rest, rejuvenation and creative practice. Guest artists included Evelyn Wong, Devon Kelly-Yurdin, and Jennie Hahn

• Organizational Retreats, trainings, and gatherings including: Maine Indian Tribal State Commission, Downeast Fisheries Partnership, Family Futures Downeast, Maine Development Foundation, Maine Inside Out and Maine Island Trail Association

• Washington County Youth Programming including Downeast Teen Leadership Camp, Upward Bound and The Traveling Rainbow Project

• Trainings and Summits: Community Caring Collaborative, Sunrise County Economic Summit, Moving Stories, and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training

We celebrated the graduation of four 2022 Cobscook Experiential Program seniors graduates in June, and we have seven seniors set to graduate in 2023, making it our largest senior class yet. Thanks to collaborations with partner organizations such as Zillman Art Museum, Eastport Arts Center, and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, CEP students engaged in several new and innovative interdisciplinary projects. Highlights from partnerships include building duck boxes at Lily Lake, and playing pickleball at Lubec Elementary School, as well as print and paper making with Bernie Vinzani at the University of Maine. We're now accepting applications for high school students. Click here to apply.

In 2022 we invested in the expansion of community programming, taking the lead from community voices through the Somedays Campaign, more than doubling offerings and laying the groundwork for increased programs, events, and engagement in 2023. 

• Our community classes and events were attended by over 850 people this year. 

• We are expanding the Cobscook Community Pottery studio and re-launched school partnership programming welcoming Edmunds and Sipayik Elementary Schools students to the studio in October. 

• We realized our long dream of a community gallery space with three shows this year

• Hosted a new herbalism series

• Launched Community Conversations, set to continue monthly in 2023. Inaugural guest facilitators included Peter Dugas from Maine Climate Action Network, artist/activist Devon Kelly-Yurdin brought, and Edge Venti, a Washington Academy Student from JustME for JustUS.

• Garden potlucks, Monday Night Music, Open Studio, and Pizza Nights provided the regular space to build community, deepen relationships, and nurture bodies, creativity, and spirit.

• Established a partnership with Iota Short Forms to offer, with over 90 participants studying all forms of short prose writing, including essays, prose poems, short stories, flash fiction and  nonfiction, micro essays, and much more. 

• Celebrated the publication of Trauma-Responsive Schooling: Centering Student Voice and Healing through a virtual book launch with authors and TREE researchers Lyn Mikel-Brown, Cat Biddle, Mark Tappan and moderator Richard Ackerman

• After a pandemic pause, we hosted our second Downeast Apple and Arts Day, a huge success, a fun filled day celebrating our local agricultural and creative communities, with live music all day, an artist fair, pottery demonstrations and arts workshops, plus a heritage apple display, talks, tastings, and cider pressing. 

• The 19th annual Down East Spring Birding Festival, the first full in-person festival since 2019, was a true delight providing a unique birding experience during spring migration season with guided hikes and boat tours, all led by local guides with local knowledge.

In 2022, we launched the Cobscook Access Fund, aimed to break down barriers to participation, cultivate solidarity and equity, and support a sliding scale pay structure that invites  community members to pay what they can for our programs. In 2022, community members utilized over $12,600 from the Access Fund, demonstrating the importance of this resource in helping people to participate in the programs that we offer. In the last month, you helped us raise over $23,000 to-reup this fund and expand equity and access to education, wellness, and community in the year ahead. Ultimately this makes for a rich, vital, community. We are grateful to everyone who contributed to the Access Fund and to those who have utilized it to participate in our programs. 

We expanded summer camp and immersion learning again this year!

• Launched Canoe Camp to round out a series of summer outdoor experiences for youth in grades 6-12. Canoe Camp explored the Downeast lakes and camped at some of the most scenic, remote campsites in eastern Maine. 

• River Camp is a two-week summer camp for teens interested in outdoor careers, conservation, ecology, and outdoor skill building. 

• Outdoor Skills Camp taught basic skills to keep safe and to have a fun time in the woods and on the water. 

• We hosted the Downeast Teen Leadership Camp on our campus, offered by Healthy Acadia, which was filled with games and team building activities, motivational speakers, and daily workshops. 

We are excited to continue expanding our summer camp offerings in the future, and all of our 2023 camps in addition to Youth Sailing Camp are now open for registration on our website.

In addition to all of these exciting programs and campus activity, we have expanded our team to optimize our programming and campus goals. We continue to develop a new generation of distributed leadership. Shaun Haskins, Co-Director & Development Director is responsible for development, relationship building, fundraising, and communications and overall strategic organizational development and operations. Maria McMorrow, high school teacher and summer program leader, brings energy and heart to campus and has stewarded curriculum expansion through new offerings in Spanish and personal finance. Annie Hopkins, Program Coordinator has built the framework for expanded community programming and cultivating the campus as community center and homeplace. Annie provides leadership within our communications circle and LGBTQ+ youth organizing.

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our partners, donors, program participants, and community members who have supported us throughout 2022. Your contributions helped us realize so many exciting programs and opportunities to our students and community, and we are deeply grateful for your support.

As we look ahead to 2023, we are filled with hope and enthusiasm for Cobcook’s future. We are excited to continue expanding our offerings and making a positive impact in our community. We look forward to working with all of you to make 2023 an even bigger success.

Thank you again for being a part of our journey, and we can't wait to see what the future holds.