Dear Dreamers,
How have you found the move into winter time? Early dusk. Longer nights.
I started to regret not having found the time to write these reflections in the immediate aftermath of the sessions themselves. Like a dream, the memory of the sessions feels less and less tangible with every day that passes and harder to recall. It makes the effort to summon the sense of them more laborious. Apologies in advance if that comes through in the body of the text.
We met, on 15th October, at the usual time of 6pm for 6.30pm, but for the first time, thanks to Sarah Blissett who hosted us, at The House, Drake Circus, Plymouth, part of the University of Plymouth.
The change of location had come about because of a question mark over Sarah’s ability to get to Dartington in time for the session. In the previous session, Sarah had led us in a new direction, incorporating elements of movement and embodiment into the structure of the session itself – breaking the circle, effectively, that we had sat in through the first two meetings of this group.
For David, Iman and myself, the three others present at this earlier session, this felt compelling. We agreed that we would rather change location to accommodate Sarah’s continued participation than lose the chance to develop in the direction that Sarah had started to lead us in.
In the meantime, Sarah had committed thoughts on the structure of our first public session (to be held at KARST on 19th October) to paper and had shared this with the three of us in advance of the meeting on 15th. This meant that we came to the session with a script in place. I’m attaching that document to this e-mail. The intention for the session on the 15th was to run it as a kind of dress rehearsal.
There were seven of us in attendance on 15th October – Iman, David, Sarah, Tilly, Molly, Natasha and myself. All seven agreed at the end of the session to present themselves at the top of these updates in open copy moving forward, effectively establishing a degree of co-authorship within the structure of the project.
Others remain in bcc here simply because the moment hasn’t yet arisen to establish consent over whether or not you would like to be included in open copy. The invitation to share in co-authorship is part and parcel of participating in the process that’s unfolding. It’s offered to anyone receiving this e-mail and there will be scope within the coming sessions to indicate any desire to be included as a named rather than anonymous participant in the project.
Equally the freedom to step away from co-authorship or from the project altogether at any time is fundamental and people have come in and then stepped away already, either for lack of time or a sense that as the identity of the project evolves, so has a feeling that it’s not for them. A simple e-mail to this effect is all that would be needed to action a movement away from the group.
Equally, the freedom to step forwards and back within the group and within the process that’s unfolding seems fundamental too. Having stepped forward to such great effect, Sarah, for example, has clearly articulated a desire to step back in the coming sessions. Others should feel free to step forward with ideas and influences that might inform the practice that’s taking shape and finding form.
Over cups of (onion and mustard seed) soup, we found ourselves quickly gripped in a standing circle as we debated and discussed questions around recording and documentation.
Dream Ecologies as an intentional public space (and not necessarily a therapeutic space) is an idea that we have often cohered around. The idea of dreams as data has kept coming back.
In advance of the session we grappled with what these ideas would mean in practice. Would the session on 19th October be filmed? Would sound be recorded? Would facilitators write down people’s dreams? And if so, would they write them down in private, using a clip-board, or in public onto the scroll of paper that we would unroll across the floor?
In whatever we decided, how could we establish consent from participants so that as they entered the space and shared their dreams, either by speaking them or writing them, they really understood what they were participating in and that if their dreams were becoming data here then they also were on-board with what this meant?
How could we, in any case, ever offer such an assurance when we did not yet know exactly what we meant?
We became more conscious of Dream Ecologies as both an experiment in co-creating public space and as first and foremost an experimental space. We also realised that we could talk and talk and that it was 6.50pm and we were still standing in the kitchen, so we went downstairs to the studio and started to rehearse.
We agreed that there would be no cameras in the space, but that sound would be recorded and that we would listen back to the sound recorded on 19th October at a meeting of the collective on November 26th.
As we set up the space, unfurling a paper scroll across the centre of the room and clusters of chairs, back-to-back in groups of three, we also set up a directional microphone on a stand, a chair placed in front of it. (We didn’t set it to record. This was only a rehearsal.)
Participants would be informed about the presence of the microphone in the room.
They could choose to engage with it directly.
They could choose to share their dreams away from the microphone.
They could choose to write them down.
We also assigned a scribe, whose role it was to write down anything that was said out loud in the space. The scribe would write onto the scroll. i.e. publicly, not privately. As soon as the session started though, the role of the scribe revealed itself as redundant. We found that anyone could be a scribe.
Writing down what you hear, what you see, what you think, what you feel, what you dreamt, what you dream. Writing. Walking. Drawing. Doodling. Listening. Sitting. Speaking. Lying down. All of these became ways of inhabiting the space.
We started by moving in the space. We were then brought to the scroll and invited to write down our reflection on dreaming and dreams. We were then guided into a process of paying closer attention to our bodily sensations and then invited to bring our dreams through any of the methods listed above into the space. I wondered, at first, if anyone would speak here. I wondered whether we had got this structure right. Then slowly, one way or another, dreams were shared into the space. Time flew. It became enchanted. Someone said, at the end of the session that sleep was still in the body, and we saw the need to close the session by patting the bodies down. I recall a feeling of alertness and excitement in the room as we packed down and walked out of the room. “It’s alive!” someone said to me, as we prepared to leave the building.