Marian Lindkvist

Founder of the Sesame Approach to Drama & Movement Therapy

Marian 'Billy' Lindkvist is the founder of the Sesame Institute. She was able to draw upon her experiences of being the mother of an autistic child, a career in advertising, and drama training to form the Sesame organisation. At the time of Sesame's inception Billy was on the executive committee of Radius - the Religious Drama Society of Great Britain.

In January 1964 she had a vivid dream: A hospital ward, patients moving together, watching plays, creating for themselves and then a transformation of joy and new birth. The dream was so vivid that, with determination and tenacity, she began to travel all over the country urging Health, Education and Welfare authorities to allow her to set up staff training workshops so that drama could be used with their patients.

She arranged a series of workshops through Dr David Stafford-Clark for Occupational Therapists at the York Clinic, Guy's Hospital in June 1964. Not long after that she met Peter Slade. He had discovered that 'Child Drama is an art form in its own right.' He linked this discovery with the psychological implications of Sesame's work and highlighted the need for further theoretical study.

Ursula Nicholl, who had been instrumental in Billy's drama training, agreed to direct a group of some of her students and together they formed KATS. As dedicated volunteers, this mime and movement group worked in over 300 large, and sometimes remote, institutions including what were then known as Sub Normality Hospitals. Working with every conceivable group of people with difficulties, they devised over 40 items or action plots that combined mime, story and music with the intention of encouraging audience participation. They found that audiences often clamoured to join in! Research projects with long-stay psychiatric patients followed and the first clinical research was published in June 1974 in the British Journal of Medical Psychology.

Billy continued to develop the full time training course as well as developing her own practice by working in America and South Africa. She retired in 1994 when she handed over directorship of the Sesame Institute to Mary Smail and has written her own book, 'Bring White Beads when you call on the Healer', as a way of bringing together the threads of her professional and personal life.