Where Dreaming Meets Art, Searching for Meaning

Article by Richard Morgan-Jones

A Social Dreaming Event inspired by “A Certain Kind of Light”, Exhibition at the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; Hosted by Angela Eden, Richard Morgan-Jones and Robert Snell.
10 am-2.30 pm on Saturday 22nd April 2017

Lightshaft - Angela Eden

A Social Dreaming Event Inspired by “A Certain Kind of Light”
 “A Certain Kind of Light explores how artists have responded to light, its materiality, transience and effect.  The exhibition brings together artworks that reflect the relationship between light and a wide range of themes from brightness, colour and perception to transformation, energy and the passage of time.” (From Towner publicity)
You are invited to join a group of people who will share dreams in relation to this exhibition.
This experience is called ‘Social Dreaming’, where a “matrix” forges a space for people to bring dreams, associations and images as they come into shape and are shaped by each other. This opens infinite possibilities of dreaming beyond your self with new dream thoughts. The morning will conclude with a Dream Reflection, which is an opportunity to link the dreams given in the matrix, to our wider social context.
 
The aim of social dreaming is to create a meeting of minds through speaking dreaming experiences. In an era drawn back towards totalitarian politics, we seek a system that respects individual responses in building shared experience and meaning. Collected meanings throw new light on social experience we all share. This is also what an exhibition does, notably one focussed around /around light. The impact of light on the senses evokes  elicits  /elicits?  a range of perceiving experiences, each one calling out different moods, different emotions. Each one reflects other senses: sounds, smells, tastes, touch and movement. These are the roots of feeling states. Transformation of sensing into imagery and feeling is at the heart of the dreaming experience that neuro-science is teaching us about anew [or: about which neuro-science is teaching us anew], belongs to primitive right-brained and intuitive experience upon which our attempted rationality depends.
Through sharing dreams, connecting them and their imagery to the exhibition, while elaborating our associations to them, this event seeks to open up deeper realms of both artistic and dreaming experience. It is the gallery visitor who sees the image and the people who hear the dream, that [or: The gallery visitor who sees the image and the people who hear the dream] are key to unlocking deeper and wider truths about our common social world.
You are encouraged to visit the Towner in the days before the social dreaming event, and re-visit it during a coffee break and afterwards.
The event will be facilitated and hosted by three people:
 Angela Eden Angela Eden works with organisations as a consultant and uses Social Dreaming in a range of different settings.  She holds the ‘Training' role in the Gordon Lawrence Foundation for Social Dreaming, as well as being a practicing artist.
Richard Morgan-Jones is an organisational consultant and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.
Robert Snell is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, a published art critic and author.


Details of the exhibition and opening times can be found at: 
 http://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/exhibition/a-certain-kind-of-light/
Tickets: can be purchased for £25 (£15 for students and those unwaged).
Write to Richard Morgan-Jones ([email protected]) or telephone: 01323-509112, giving your contact details, and he will send you a form and details of how to pay. He will also be pleased to answer any questions about the event. Do please circulate this publicity and bring friends and colleagues.
There will be a break during the morning for refreshments and snacks in the Towner café.
For more information about Social dreaming, see the Gordon Lawrence Foundation for social dreaming at http://www.socialdreaming.com