Dream Incubation
Language of the Birds
@ the Department of Dreams
Solstice eve, 20/21st June 2020
Equinox Dream Tending 23rd September 2021Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington 8.30 pm
NZDT //
Port Vila 7.30 pm VUT // Ngunawal Country Canberra 6.30 pm AEST // Athens 11.30am EEST // Berlin 10.30 am CEST // Brighton 9.30 am BST Language of the Birds
@ the Department of Dreams
Solstice eve, 20/21st June 2020
September’s dream meeting is a special session with Meeting Oceania.
All are welcome to bring paints, pencils, mark-making tools, materials and the movement of the body to respond to what turns up in the shared space of story and laughter.
Full details: languageofthedre.am
RSVP hello@languageofthedre.am for password to meeting room
Image: Kate Genevieve, "Salvage 27", 2019
Second Phase
Symbolic Imagination & Relational Dreaming
“As Within, So Without, As above, So below”
Hermes Trismegistus
We are forever walking the shoreline of the wild unconscious. The Great Sea holds treasures, offers us hard-won insight and perhaps gifts us with what is needed for the journey. This living force is known through many names - some know it as the sea of awareness, the vital imagination, others call it Great Spirit. Many cultures tend a reverent relationship with the energies of nature that live within.
The Elders and the Ancients, the alchemists and psychoanalysts, remind us that our most personal realities and intimate relational experiences are deeply connected to our wider societal problems. My work with group dream work is motivated by a sense that the need for systemic healing extends all the way down into the deeper levels of human psyche.
Supporting the space of dream is always holding space for the new; for that which is just being born. Dream-tending listens to what lives within and between people & the streams of spontaneous creation that move through each one of us.
Learning the richness of dreaming together is a wild and curious exploration, each dreamer swimming in shared waters, whilst being a unique imaginal world of sovereign being. We have found that the practice can strengthen individuals and groups through tending warm truth-telling accountable cultures. At this crossroads in human history we are learning how vital it is to grow welcoming inspiring cultural containers, sturdy enough to support peoples from all walks of life to commune and work for societal change.
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Extract from Salvage
Microbial vision
Through Lockdown in the UK a group of creatives came together in the Language of the Birds Sunday sessions and held a space to listen together to the fresh dreams rising during Lockdown.
We opened a collective dream invitation on the 22nd April and held a public dream incubation on the night of the 20th / 21st of June on the solstice eve.
+ Sundays at 4pm BST - ongoing open meetings for collective dream sharing
“As Within, So Without, As above, So below”
Hermes Trismegistus
We are forever walking the shoreline of the wild unconscious. The Great Sea holds treasures, offers us hard-won insight and perhaps gifts us with what is needed for the journey. This living force is known through many names - some know it as the sea of awareness, the vital imagination, others call it Great Spirit. Many cultures tend a reverent relationship with the energies of nature that live within.
The Elders and the Ancients, the alchemists and psychoanalysts, remind us that our most personal realities and intimate relational experiences are deeply connected to our wider societal problems. My work with group dream work is motivated by a sense that the need for systemic healing extends all the way down into the deeper levels of human psyche.
Supporting the space of dream is always holding space for the new; for that which is just being born. Dream-tending listens to what lives within and between people & the streams of spontaneous creation that move through each one of us.
Learning the richness of dreaming together is a wild and curious exploration, each dreamer swimming in shared waters, whilst being a unique imaginal world of sovereign being. We have found that the practice can strengthen individuals and groups through tending warm truth-telling accountable cultures. At this crossroads in human history we are learning how vital it is to grow welcoming inspiring cultural containers, sturdy enough to support peoples from all walks of life to commune and work for societal change.
Extract from Salvage
Microbial vision
Language of the Birds
Through Lockdown in the UK a group of creatives came together in the Language of the Birds Sunday sessions and held a space to listen together to the fresh dreams rising during Lockdown.
We opened a collective dream invitation on the 22nd April and held a public dream incubation on the night of the 20th / 21st of June on the solstice eve.
+ Sundays at 4pm BST - ongoing open meetings for collective dream sharing
From Language of the Birds Invitation, Lockdown 2020
“In the pregnant moment of transition, we feel lines of connection, healing and possibility across the living diversity of our dream spaces. Let’s tend the creative seeds. Let's ask loving relations and deep imagination to lead the way.”
The Department of Dreams Solstice incubation in June 2020 welcomed the illustrators Olu Oke and Kaa Faenson who visualised the collective dreaming through their own unique styles. The Dream incubation event was part of World Unity Week, with support from Fraendi.
RSVP hello@languageofthedre.am for password to meeting room
“In the pregnant moment of transition, we feel lines of connection, healing and possibility across the living diversity of our dream spaces. Let’s tend the creative seeds. Let's ask loving relations and deep imagination to lead the way.”
The Department of Dreams Solstice incubation in June 2020 welcomed the illustrators Olu Oke and Kaa Faenson who visualised the collective dreaming through their own unique styles. The Dream incubation event was part of World Unity Week, with support from Fraendi.
RSVP hello@languageofthedre.am for password to meeting room
Recordings
+ Department of Dreams Welcome 11.00 - 12.00pm BST SAT 21st JUNE 2020
+ Department of Dreams Incubation Session 5:00 - 5.45pm BST SAT 20TH JUNE
+ Department of Dreams Dream Sharing 9.00am BST Sunday 21st JUNE (not recorded)
+ audio messages of dream reports can be left on the anonymous dreamline or on the dreamline +44 7961 481467 or via an online form
Salvage 2019
Dreaming for Systems Change
Kate worked as the mentor for the Systems Change Hive in Brighton with the STEPS Centre at the University of Sussex. Dream tending emerged organically from facilitating the group and from asking questions about care and relational health in creative communities:
How can we support imaginative sovereignty within a collective? How can we listen to the groups needs in creative ways and notice what is being neglected? How can we tend understanding between people?
Kate’s project “SALVAGE” for the System Change Hive touring exhibition gave a glimpse of the relational dreaming processes explored by the Hive across 2019.
In SALVAGE she explored listening, glyphing and dream tending work learnt with Dr Apela Colorado to create one large drawing from all the dreams collected. We named the emergent collective dream image an oneiroglyph - a kind of magical sigil for Systems Change. The image traces some of the imaginal entanglements of those who participated in our collective experiment around “informed dreaming for a better future”.*
The dreams collected contain shadow and possibility; conflict and intense struggle, as well as creative inspirations for fresh paths onwards. Through taking the time to turn up to listen, share and face what lives inside us as it is, we hope to grow capacity for acting with the kind of compassion and sensitivity needed in transformative times.
Kate Genevieve joined with Sarah Janes to open up the Systems Change dream tending to the mass Climate protests in England in 2019 and invited ecological activists to share their dreams during the October actions. During the London protests, activists slept out in tents close to each other, creating an ad hoc mass dream incubation for the transformation of the workings of the city. This work began with a Water Pilgrimage on the banks of the River Thames.
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The Thames, Water Pilgrimage at the London Protests 2019
The Thames, Water Pilgrimage at the London Protests 2019
Origin
Extracts from Dream Machine 2010
Video documentation, Alison Garnham
Commissioned for Brighton’s White Night Festival. Directed by Sarah Bird, Kate Genevieve and Abbie Stanton.
Dream Machine featured the work of Brighton artists and animators in a city-wide story of sleep experimentation and imagination told through Newspaper comics, live performance, radio broadcast, and the audience live-tweeting their dreams onto the building during the night with an interactive projection designed by artist Seb Lee Delisle.
I founded chroma.space in 2010 during a collective dream project Dream Machine: an outdoor collaborative projection event for White Night Brighton and Hove projecting the dreams of the people of Brighton onto architecture in the city.
Working with collective dreaming was further encouraged by an invititation to collaborate with Gascia Ouzinian’s art project “Music for Sleeping and Waking Minds” developing ideas on visualising the contents of sleep.
Then in 2013 I met Dr Apela Colorado in Chartres France and her extraordinary place-based dreaming practice. Over the next seven years I learnt with Dr Colorado and worked with her team on the Chartrean dream work. This work took me into a deep apprenticeship in listening to and glyphing the dreams of hundreds of dreamers in France, Hawaii, South Africa and the North of England. I discovered first hand that dream sharing when done in creative participation and relationship with the land has a phenomenal creative and healing power.
All my work with relational dreaming draws from these waters of origin. The dream practice at WISN is ever evolving and I work with the group whenever the opportunity arises. For anyone who would like to learn more, Apela Colorado’s book Woman Between the Worlds is recently released and shares her life’s work supporting communities and the wisdom of indigenous elders.
For me, the essence of dream tending is receptivity and working with dreams has emerged through invitation, collaboration and mutual creative delight in imaginal work. This has led to the dream catography project work for the Cosmic Trigger Play in Liverpool with illustrator Will Scobie, morning dream groups at Schumacher College during Carla Stang and Martin Shaw’s Wedding the Wild 2017, Edgeryders Care Festival in Brussels with Faranak Mirjalili and most recently languageofthedre.am with Kate Alderton and Paola Bay over Zoom through Lockdown and at Civic Square’s the Department of Dreams and Meeting Oceania’s Meeting of the Waters.
Working with collective dreaming was further encouraged by an invititation to collaborate with Gascia Ouzinian’s art project “Music for Sleeping and Waking Minds” developing ideas on visualising the contents of sleep.
Then in 2013 I met Dr Apela Colorado in Chartres France and her extraordinary place-based dreaming practice. Over the next seven years I learnt with Dr Colorado and worked with her team on the Chartrean dream work. This work took me into a deep apprenticeship in listening to and glyphing the dreams of hundreds of dreamers in France, Hawaii, South Africa and the North of England. I discovered first hand that dream sharing when done in creative participation and relationship with the land has a phenomenal creative and healing power.
All my work with relational dreaming draws from these waters of origin. The dream practice at WISN is ever evolving and I work with the group whenever the opportunity arises. For anyone who would like to learn more, Apela Colorado’s book Woman Between the Worlds is recently released and shares her life’s work supporting communities and the wisdom of indigenous elders.
For me, the essence of dream tending is receptivity and working with dreams has emerged through invitation, collaboration and mutual creative delight in imaginal work. This has led to the dream catography project work for the Cosmic Trigger Play in Liverpool with illustrator Will Scobie, morning dream groups at Schumacher College during Carla Stang and Martin Shaw’s Wedding the Wild 2017, Edgeryders Care Festival in Brussels with Faranak Mirjalili and most recently languageofthedre.am with Kate Alderton and Paola Bay over Zoom through Lockdown and at Civic Square’s the Department of Dreams and Meeting Oceania’s Meeting of the Waters.
The Oneiric Archives, Cosmic Trigger
No. 11 (above) & No. 23 (below)
All 23 dreams online here:
oneiricarchives.tumblr.com
Will Scobie and Kate Genevieve
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No. 11 (above) & No. 23 (below)
All 23 dreams online here:
oneiricarchives.tumblr.com
Will Scobie and Kate Genevieve
Dream Tending at the Edgeryders’ OpenVillage Festival Brussels with Faranak Mirjalili 2017.
A meeting exploring Open Science, Architectures of Love and Revolutionary Care.
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Visual vaults : https://oneiricarchives.tumblr.com
Audio vaults : http://languageofthebirds.wikidot.com/experiments
Language of the Birds Dream Incubation
Civic Square’s The Department of Dreams 2020
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A meeting exploring Open Science, Architectures of Love and Revolutionary Care.
Visual vaults : https://oneiricarchives.tumblr.com
Audio vaults : http://languageofthebirds.wikidot.com/experiments
Language of the Birds Dream Incubation
Civic Square’s The Department of Dreams 2020
Art by Olu Oke 
Art by Kaa Faenson