UUFCC-ID2024 - Festival Themes

The 2024 Imagine & Dream Lantern Festival is organized by Lifespan Religious Education at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County, but encourages content contributions from across UUFCC. It provides opportunities for activity groups at UUFCC to showcase what they offer to the fellowship and the wider community.

Contact Ashley Hamlin or Doug Archibald if you would like to join the effort in some way

The central aims are to celebrate and grow the awesome abilities we all have to imagine, dream and create positive change

Our festival logo encourages each participant to strive to become a better change agent:

Each year at this festival we:

CELEBRATE

the awesome ability we all have to IMAGINE & DREAM
the power of DREAMS to provide hope and help us make progress, both personally and collectively

STUDY

how civil-rights-era leaders created positive changes in society
how any individual or team can become a better agent of change

GROW

our creative change abilities through the fun challenge of building decorative battery-operated lanterns from recycled materials
our appreciation of how festival lanterns and lights are such powerful symbols in many religious traditions

GATHER

our little lights on for an evening of lanterns, music, wonder and hot drinks at the community-built Imagine & Dream Lantern Garden in front of our UUFCC building

For 2024 our Themes and Subthemes are:

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Creative Change

the LGBT+ Rights Struggle

Love & Empathy

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This year we search for wisdom and inspiration in the 35 year struggle for homosexuality to be considered normal and healthy by the medical establishment. Starting in 1952, a short paragraph in the American Psychiatric Association's influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders tragically listed homosexuality as a type of mental disturbance. We examine why this happened and the great injustices it caused; and we celebrate and learn from the inspiring history of how a small number of people overcame powerful biases and entrenched institutional forces to prompt removing homosexuality from the APA’s official list of mental disorders in 1974. Though this was a pivotal moment, it was not until 1987 that the APA’s DSM fully aligned with the modern scientific consensus that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality. How that progress was achieved and how it has affected our lives and our society will be the focus of the 'Imagine & Dream - Closer to Free to be LGBT+' worship service and post-discussions to take place on Sunday, February 25, 2024.
The Imagine & Dream Lantern Festival Evening will be Saturday February 24 (5:30-9:00 pm). That event will feature Lantern-Making Activities as well as learning and experiential opportunities in two other ways to create positive change in society:
1. At the Imagine with Beans Potluck Dinner (5:30-6:30 pm) in Fellowship Hall, fellowship members will share how our collective future might be improved by shifting our diets to include more beans and other plant-based protein sources.
2. At the Imagine with Drums Drumming Circle (6:45-8:15 pm) in the Sanctuary, fellowship and community members will learn and explore how music can be used to grow and enhance a community.

Ignite your light

IMAGINE change like Lennon

DREAM of change like MLK

Learn to be a change-agent

Let's shine together