Devon Social Dreaming Matrix
Next Social Dreaming Matrix: 15th January @
Totnes Natural Health Centre - doors open 6.45pm
What is a Social Dreaming Matrix?
The Devon Social Dreaming Matrix is a completely unique environment in which people can come together and dream their way through periods of collective change, upheaval and crisis. Throughout the centuries people of all cultures and societies have used their nocturnal dreams to provide guidance and insight, to help make decisions and to provide a guiding light in the darkness. In Social Dreaming we emphasise the social meaning of our dreams rather than their personal or individual meaning. In this way the dreamer is merely a conduit for something that may hold meaning for us all. The dreamer is simply the person who the dream has spoken through. In the matrix, our dreams are woven together into one tapestry to provide collective insight and understanding.
Come, bring your dreams and see how our dreams begin the speak to each other and to our collective endeavours.
This Social Dreaming Matrix is held once a month at the Totnes Natural Health Centre. This is an open event but numbers are currently limited to 15 due to Covid restrictions. Doors open to the participants at 6.45pm and are closed at 7pm so that the process isn’t interrupted once started. The evening ends at 9pm. Participants are encouraged to arrive a few minutes before 7pm to guarantee a place and to get settled before the start.
You don’t need to bring anything other than yourselves. The dreams that are shared are those that come in our sleep and they may be from the previous night, the previous week or from many years ago. It is a matter of what emerges spontaneously and unconsciously while the matrix is open.
There are two halves to the evening - the first is the matrix, during which the dreams are shared. There is a tea break before the second half when we process and explore the dreams and their social meaning.
All participants are invited to give a donation towards the costs of the evening. £5 for those on a low income, £10 or more for those on higher incomes.
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The Story of Social Dreaming...
"Social Dreaming was discovered by W. Gordon Lawrence and further developed by a growing community of social dreamers.
Dr. W. Gordon Lawrence (1934-2013) was the founder of the field of social dreaming. When working as a social scientist at the Tavistock Institute in London in the early 1980s, Gordon became convinced that there was a wider social context to people’s dreams. He was greatly influenced by the German journalist Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams (1968). In her book, she shows how the Nazi’s rise to power in the 1930s generated angst in the German population, particularly amongst Jews. Jewish patient’s dreams, collected from doctors by Beradt, foretold their horrendous future.
Gordon saw the possibility of dreaming socially—to use dreams to understand the human condition and not just about “me”. In the spring of 1982, with the psychoanalyst Patricia Daniels, he began holding weekly “Social Dreaming Sessions” at the Tavistock, called ‘A Project in Social Dreaming and Creativity’. He held social dreaming conferences in London, Birmingham and Ireland. Social dreaming flourished in Israel, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, the USA, Ireland, Finland, Rwanda, South Africa, Holland, Denmark, Australia and India.
Social dreaming is at a turning point, with its community developing new ideas to further develop social dreaming for the benefit of all."
(Centre for Social Dreaming 2020)