Dear Dreamers,
I hope you’ve all been keeping well. Please accept my apologies for the delay in this update, which includes some reflections on our planning for the public matrix in Honiton on the 12th April.
Before I begin, here is some key info about our upcoming meetings:
13 May: Collective meeting, Radical Ecology Studio
3rd June: Public Matrix, location tbc
24th June: Collective meeting, Radical Ecology studio
15th July: Public Matrix, location tbc
It’s worth noting that Ashish, Tilly and I will be away for the public matrix on the 3rd June. Ashish and Natasha will be leading the collective meeting on the 13th May, and it would be helpful to use some of this time to explore location options for the 3rd. It could be at the studio (we could sort out keys if so), or at The House in Plymouth, or perhaps somewhere entirely new, a location we haven’t yet imagined. Any thoughts and ideas are very welcome!
…
On the 25th March, we gathered at the Radical Ecology studio. Eight of us - Tallula, Sarah, Sara, Mariam, Tilly, Ashish, David and myself - were present. Natasha sent her apologies but offered to help facilitate the public matrix on the 12 April. It was decided that David, Tallula, Tilly and I would join her.
This planning session already feels so long ago that many specific details are blurred. But I do recall that we were all feeling quite tired that week, so instead of preparing soup or baked goods, we bought snacks from the village shop to sustain us through the evening. Sara also brought some wild garlic, freshly picked and generously shared. I think this might have been our first planning session when it was still light outside. The combination of the wild garlic, picnic style snacks and lingering daylight marked a sense of vitality, and also awakeness! I wonder how the seasons, as they continue to turn, might shape and inform our activities?
I remember a conversation about the value of dreams, acknowledging a fear of instrumentalising dreams - to immediately turn them into actions. We spoke about not downplaying their significance either, allowing them in, and giving them permission to permeate the everyday.
Mariam described an instance where a dream called her to go to a place. Ashish reflected on a similar experience. During these reflections of dreams that called us or shifted something in the everyday, the sun began to set. We sat in the studio and let the darkness come in as we spoke about the moon in the last session. We thought about our sensory hierarchies, and at one point we could hear the bells from St. Mary’s Church… the bells that were so loud in the woods, now very quiet and softened by distance, but still recognisable, perhaps because of our time dreaming in the woods in the weeks before.
The session ended with discussions about the upcoming matrix at Thelma Hulbert Gallery - what we might carry forward, what we might leave behind. We spoke about the setting, which was once a house, and still feels like a home. Ashish suggested that we might use the corridor and staircase, and I suggested that we might spill out into the garden.
We spoke briefly about the facilitation of the session, acknowledging the new approach we were taking. In the past, we’ve usually had two facilitators leading a public matrix, with the session in the North Woods an exception, where three facilitators held the space. Afterwards, Sarah reflected on the value in being held by multiple people in multiple ways. Our session in Honiton, at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery, with five of us, felt like a more deliberate step in that direction.
I remember leaving that meeting excited by the prospect of really shaping each role, tending to individual personalities, strengths and areas where we might want to grow. While not all of us would be active facilitators, i.e. giving verbal instruction, we could each take on a different kind of presence in the space. Facilitation could be quiet, simply being there to frame the space, or it could be more active. The important thing would be designing a structure where every role has a place.
Later, Natasha reflected on the style of this facilitation, likening it to the Levitation game we both remembered from school. In this game, 5 or 6 people place a single finger under the body of a person lying down, and lift them up together. It feels like magic as the person appears to float. But it is the lightness of touch, and crucially the collective support from multiple actors, that makes this possible.
I thought this was a beautiful way to describe what seems to be emerging from within the collective. There’s this sense that is the responsiveness and process, our ability to shift, adapt and support each other, that keeps this space nurturing. It doesn’t feel like work; it feels like a living body, existing, moving and evolving.
This is as far as I have gotten with the reflection for now, and I will add some more thoughts in the coming days. If anyone else would also like to share some thoughts, please do feel welcome to!
Warmly,
Iman