Dear Dreamers,
I hope 2025 has got off to a good start for you and please accept my apologies for this late e-mail which has sat in my drafts folder for too long.
Key information: we’ll be holding a dream ecologies collective meeting from 6-8pm next Tuesday 21st Jan and a public matrix at the same time on Tuesday 4th Feb. Both meetings will take place at the Radical Ecology studio in Webbers Yard in Dartington.
Here is where I got up to in my reflection on the last meeting. I will complete it before Tuesday or if anyone else would like to complete instead please say.
**
On December 10th, we held our first public dream matrix at the Radical Ecology studio in Webbers Yard which was also our last Dream Ecologies meeting of 2024, after 4 months of sustained activity in both Dartington and Plymouth.
I took on the role of lead facilitator and Sara took on the role of supporting facilitator, though in actuality my sense was that the session as it unfolded was very much and very successfully led by Sara, particularly when leaning into her own instincts and approach for the session. I felt that where I attempted to replicate Sarah B’s format, at the start of the session, it felt a little more contrived. I can say more on this further down.
Iman supported the session by printing out the documentation and liaising with participants to ask them to read and sign it before we started. Tilly and Iman both helped Sara and I to lay out the space. Mark helped raise a crowd from Week and Dartington by sharing on local Facebook news boards. Great to see Molly back after a few weeks. Apologies received from Natasha and Sarah B. Looking forward to seeing David and Kate back in the new year.
My babysitter called in sick the day before, so I also brought my daughters, 7 and 9 years old, along. It could have been a disaster (!) but I don’t think it was. They had snacks and a sense of freedom to interact with the space and the group in the way that made sense to them and there was some explicitly positive feedback about the relaxed atmosphere their presence created in the space, with one participant talking about possibly bringing their child along to a future session. I got the sense that my eldest actually found the content of the session very interesting and felt comfortable (perhaps thanks to encouragement from Tilly) to share her dreams in the group. All information to reflect on and talk about in the next meeting of the collective.
We opened the space with the traditional offer of bread and soup, as well as minced pies that didn’t actually circulate until the end of the session. As Kedisha was in residence in the large studio space, we restricted the session to the remaining carpeted areas, as well as the kitchen and steps, and once the session was in full swing, everyone naturally congregated in the office space where we had also unrolled the dream scroll across two folding tables and set up the microphone beside it.
If I remember correctly, in addition to the collective members and my children there were 5 further participants, four of whom had come from the local area around Dartington and one who had travelled all the way from Falmouth. As I understand three were friends of Mark and responding to the notice on Facebook while two were responding to the instagram post that Tilly had posted a week in advance.
We started the session off with introductions.