Freeflow Institute curates immersive outdoor learning experiences in the most challenging and inspiring classrooms on Earth – for all people, of all backgrounds. We help humans connect to places, to one another, and to the truest forms of their work and art. Since 2018 Freeflow has presented learners, thinkers, and explorers with a unique opportunity to develop their crafts in wild river corridors and iconic wilderness settings.
Founder Story Freeflow was born from a love for rivers, art, and education. Freeflow Institute was founded in 2018 by Chandra Brown, a language teacher, river guide, and freelance writer originally from Alaska. The river is central to Chandra’s life: She grew up along the silty salmon rivers of Alaska. Each summer, she guides rafts on the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. A 2010 Fulbright took her to the Andes and the Amazon, where she began working with the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute to raise awareness of the threats facing the region’s rivers. In graduate school she helped establish Ecuador’s Jondachi Fest, a river festival celebrating whitewater culture and strategic river conservation. More recently she has traveled to Uganda to kayak and collect stories about communities affected by the damming of the White Nile River. Chandra feels most at home at confluences. Her home sits on the land where two iconic Montana rivers collide: the Blackfoot and the Clark Fork. And, indeed, Freeflow is a confluence of Chandra’s most impassioned works: education, rivers, and the arts.
Freeflow programs are characterized by academic rigor and innovative course design. Chandra, an affiliate faculty member at the University of Montana, crafts each syllabus in concert with Freeflow’s guest instructors, and each unique course is then accredited through the colleges of the University. The Institute offers programs for college undergrads, graduate students, professionals, hobbyists, and artists at the earliest stages of their relationship with the craft. Freeflow courses allow emerging and established writers and artists to work alongside leading experts in the field. While learning about and practicing their craft in the outdoors, Freeflow participants are afforded a unique opportunity to develop substantive relationships, build their skills, and begin to understand their place within ecological and social systems.
