Dear Dreamers,
Many thanks to everyone that joined us last week and to those of you who sent your apologies and intentions of joining us this evening. As agreed, we will open the doors tonight at 6pm with an offer of bread and soup for anyone that wants it. We will begin the session at 6.30pm again and end at 8pm. The address is The Loft, 1b Cedars Units, Webbers Yard, Dartington TQ9 6JY.
By way of recap, last week I offered something of an introduction to the project and to Radical Ecology’s new studio above the Almond Thief Bakery and the Green Funeral Company at Webbers Yard. We then spent most of the session making time for introductions from everyone attending. That way we learned a little about who was in the room and the diverse experiences of dreaming and dream-work that were in the room.
We began to talk about the format and intention of Dream Ecologies moving forward. We discussed a shared intention of establishing a regular meeting at the Radical Ecology studio in Webbers Yard – one Tuesday evening per month – for the presentation of “a dream matrix” and agreed on sticking with the timing of this evening’s meeting moving forward: 6pm for bread and soup followed by a 90-minute session from 6.30pm to 8pm. We spoke about Radical Ecology’s 5-year lease on the studio and the intention of holding a space where a collective dream sharing practice might unfold over this 5-year duration.
We agreed to continue the discussion this evening about how exactly the format of the dream matrix will work here and how members of this group will actively facilitate the space, and we agreed to prioritise.a discussion this evening about issues such as confidentiality and how we will navigate tensions between making the space we cultivate through this activity an open space or a public space or a private space or a trusted space.
It was not quite clear to me whether we had established consent for making this e-mail list an open thread, and so I have kept everyone blind copied for the moment while we continue to get to know one another. We might want to revisit this question of visibility/anonymity this evening.
We discussed the possibility of holding a first dream matrix at KARST in Plymouth from 9.30am-11am. This will be in the context of a wider public programme for the New Contemporaries exhibition that Radical Ecology is convening, exploring the relation between artistic practice and cultural strategy and the recent far-right riots that took place in the city and across England. Different opinions were expressed in response to this proposal but a decision was agreed to move forward, with between 3 and 5 of us showing an interest in facilitating. As such, the event has now been fixed and one action for this evening, as we evolve the format, will also be to consider whether additional meetings will be helpful in advance of the 19th October, as we prepare for this new beginning.
Hopefully, this summary helps to get everyone on the same page ahead of this evening. Once we sit down at 6.30pm, I would propose that we start with a “check-in” – introductions from everyone present, including reflections on last week’s meeting and the week that’s passed from anyone who was here last week and general introductions from anyone attending for the first time. I think it would be useful to address questions of confidentiality and openness as a priority after that and to agree dates for future meetings before we then start to walk through the format of the matrix and explore questions that come up as they come up, with a view to then coming back into a closing circle for reflection before ending the session at 8pm.
Please do feel free to flag anything that I’ve missed or any other specific points that you’d like to raise or add to the agenda for this evening.
Best Wishes,
Ashish.