The WhatuDream
Project – Working with Teens, Dreams, and Creativity
Allison Smith is the
founder of WhatuDream, a New York City nonprofit that works with
teens, using their dreams to access their creativity. She has an
MA in African-American Studies and is currently a PhD candidate in
Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she is
focusing adolescents and dreaming.
Abstract
WhatuDream, Inc. is a nonprofit
organization that provides arts education programs that teach
teens how to use dreams to spark their creativity. Using dream
journals, collage, creative writing, and exploration of the visual
arts, teens gain invaluable self-knowledge, develop leadership
abilities, and improve their problem-solving skills. WhatuDream
teaches teens how to harness the wisdom and power of their dreams
– a universal, free, renewable resource – to create original
writing and art. Dreams take us places we haven’t been, give us
complex character portraits, employ a symbolic language, show us
future outcomes of our actions, and teach us how to synthesize
information in imaginative ways; all of which can inspire and
guide teens in their creative endeavors.
This
workshop will be an opportunity for participants to learn some of
the theoretical and practical methodologies and exercises that can
be used when creating and facilitating dream workshops for
teenagers. We will discuss the unique aspects of teens’ dreams and
what makes the dreams of teens similar to the dreams of children
and adults. Participants will take part in a creative exercise
called the Who Am I? collage. After making a collage using images
from magazines, participants will engage in a discussion regarding
the imagery that they chose to represent themselves. We will use
the collages to connect ideas about self-representation and the
images/symbols that appear in our dreams.
The
last part of the workshop will include the viewing of a film about
dreams that was made by teenagers that I worked with during Summer
2005. The teenagers were part of the PRO-TV workshop at the
Downtown Community Television Center in New York City. Using
documentary filmmaking as its medium, PRO-TV provides positive,
creative outlets for youth to address the critical issues that
affect them or their communities on a daily basis. The teens at
the PRO-TV summer workshop chose dreams as the subject of their
short film. The film includes man-on-the-street interviews about
what people believe dreams are and what dreams mean, as well as
portions of a dream group that I facilitated with the teens.
