"There is individual shit we need to compost and there is collective shit we need to compost. We need to figure out how to compost individual shit so that we can show up differently to compost the affective, cognitive and relational shit that creates the ecological and economic problems that we are facing."

Vanessa Andreotti in conversation with Jem Bendell [http://bit.ly/vandreotti]

Collective Dreaming for Systems Change

In 2019 vast numbers of people demonstrated around the world demanding radical systemic transformations to avert the worst future scenarios for the planet. This unprecedented unleashing of public energy revealed that millions across the world cared about the planet.

Perhaps this moment is a large-scale dream incubation? In London, many slept out in tents, close to each other, weathering the elements and discomfort to disrupt the workings of the city. The practice of ‘dream incubation’ began many thousands of years ago and the earliest versions of the technique involved lying directly on the Earth, attuning oneself to the vibrations and rhythms of the planet, entering into the dream of the Earth Goddess, learning how to serve her and receiving her wisdom in sleep.

Below are dreams collected in Brighton at the Systems Change Hive - a collective dedicated to informed dreaming and communicating Systems Change alternatives - and during the London Rebellion in Autumn 2019.

☆ With thanks to the dreamers! This creative experiment relies entirely on the generosity of creative humans tending the dream of systems change who replied to the invitation to share their dreams in 2019.

Sharon Blackie on becoming the dreaming:

"I write and teach constantly about all of the ways in which our imagination can bring us into deep conversation with the land, so that we can not only listen to, but become part of its Dreaming. For me, the mythic imagination is key: our ability to discern and work with the archetypal energies at work in our places, and the wider world around us. The mythic imagination is about training ourselves to pierce the veil, and see into the Mystery. To value the beautiful physical and sensory everyday reality we occupy, but then to learn to perceive the archetypal river which flows above, below, and all around us. It’s about walking with one foot in this word and one in the Otherworld. For those of us who work as creatives – as writers, artists, weavers, stitchers, woodworkers – it’s about acts of co-creation. Letting the archetypal world inform our process and our output. Dreaming into all that lies beyond the merely visible. Dreaming into the foxfires and wolfskins; glimpsing the Old Woman in the heron and giving her a new voice; listening, as Irish poet Derek Mahon put it, to the sob-story of a stone. Letting the land reveal its Dreaming through our words and images. Revealing that Dreaming in any way you can. Giving it a channel, letting the soul of this beautiful world speak through us. It’s a sacred calling that speaks to a holy longing inside us.

For me, it’s all there is."