The Secret Dreams Project

Photo: TH’s garage (Tamsin Bishton)

The idea

I’d like to listen to people’s experiences of the last few weeks, hear about how people are making sense of the current situation, and most of all their stories about the future.

In order to do this I’m going to invite people to join me for a Zoom conversation (which I will record). We’ll have a conversation based around three questions:

• How did we get here?
• How are things for you right now?
• What is your dream for the future?

My hypothesis is that if I am interested in these conversations then there will be other people who will be interested too. Once I’ve recorded these conversations my intention is to create a video-based output that I’d like to share with others.

In the first instance I’ll have a conversation with four people who I know. Then I hope to move on to talking to people I don’t know.

How the idea will be executed

I need people to volunteer to take part.

• I’ll invite four people I know to take part.
• I’ll ask each person who is involved if they know someone who might like to take part — and whether they’d be willing to introduce me to that person.
• I’ll share this Medium post on social media and directly with people in an effort to encourage people to take part.

I’ll make sure people understand what they are agreeing to — especially that what we talk about will potentially be published in an edited format to be shared in the public space at some point in the future.

I’ll interview people via Zoom and record the conversations — giving people the choice about whether they want to use the video camera or not.

Once I’ve had enough conversations (ideally around 20) I’ll edit the outputs. I’m not tied to a specific format for the output. My initial sense is that it would be a single thing — but I’m open to the idea that it might be a series of things.

I’ll publish it on a video platform — most likely Youtube — and then share it via the Wilsome LLP website, my social media channels (Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) and via email as appropriate.

My intention is to complete work on this project in its first iteration by the end of June 2020.

Why — the context for this idea

Here are the reasons why I want to do this:

• When I was studying history at university I spent some time focused on a specific period in the second world war looking at how the British government sought to monitor and manage public opinion. In particular I looked at then recently declassified “top secret” archive documents from 1942 and 1943 from the Home Office, MI5, the Ministry of Information and Mass Observation covering efforts to ensure that the British public were engaged with the positive aspects of being in alliance with the USSR — and felt motivated and encouraged by this — without then tipping over into admiration and active interest in communism. There was great concern in the highest government circles that our reliance on a communist state to help us win the war would manifest in a communist revolution once the war was won if people’s attitudes weren’t closely watched and manipulated. Well of course, no communist revolution came. But we did shift heavily towards socialism immediately after the war. Chruchill was unceremoniously dumped as PM and so were many of the “outdated” policies of conservatism. Britain built the NHS and welfare state which — though tattered and threadbare after the recent onslaught of undiluted neoliberalism and social asset stripping — is the same incomplete safety net which is doing its best to catch and protect us all right now. My view, based on that research I did back in the early 1990s, is that although those in power during the second world war did their best to maintain continuity and the status quo, ordinary people formed their own vision during the war years for how they wanted things to change “when this is over” based on their day to day experiences. I am wondering if we might be in a similar situation now? There are many powerful groups of people and organisations who have a vested interest in us “getting back to normal” when this is all over. Our views and opinions are even more susceptible to manipulation — as the Cambridge Analytica debacle proves. But it is still interesting to ask the question — how do individuals feel about the future now? What would “back to normal” look like? Is that what people want? And are there any alternative visions out there?
• I am finding it very hard to consider “the future” for myself at the moment. This is troubling to me as I am someone who was very focused on what might be possible over the next few years in the context of stepping up to the climate and biodiversity emergencies. Without being able to imagine a future, I don’t know how we shape it or understand what opportunities are open to us to make a future that’s better than this present. So hearing other people’s visions and future dreams would be very valuable to me right now.
• Until the pandemic came and stopped everything in its tracks, the visions that many people shared around a carbon neutral future — where nature is given the chance it needs to recover from the terrible impact of human activity on it — were frequently labelled as “unrealistic” or “unachievable”. They required too much change to happen too quickly. People wouldn’t be able to absorb it or get their heads around it. But here we are in the terrible present where we have indeed pressed pause in an effort to reduce the deadly losses to Covid-19. So perhaps what was once “pie in the sky” could be possible after all. Couldn’t it? I want to know what people are dreaming about now when they look into the future — good and bad.

I am not proposing to do anything scientific or particularly academically rigorous with this project. I don’t have the capacity or resources to do that. I’m just interested to see what people have got to say — and I’ll try and ask as broad a group of people as I can for their perspectives. But this is where I’m coming from — and it’s worth me being transparent about that.

My principles for guiding this work

My hope is to have this conversation with a diverse group of people, from as many walks of life as I can manage. So I commit to putting conscious effort into that and doing my best to reach beyond the bubble of my own experience and views.

I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths or share stories that aren’t intended for a wider audience. So I commit to checking back in with people who take part and ensuring they approve anything involving their stories before I share more widely.

I care about protecting people’s data and privacy. I commit to not sharing personal information and to deleting anything that I don’t use in the final output after a period of 24 months.

I recognise that I am not an unbiased participant in this process — I will inevitably make choices and decisions that are shaped by my own views, prejudices and preferences. I’ll be as transparent about this as I can be and I’ll challenge myself as much as possible to hold other people’s perspectives and experiences in as much importance as my own.

Asking for your help

If you feel that this is a project you’d be interested in supporting there are two ways you can do this:

1. Take part yourself — this would involve committing to a recorded Zoom call of up to half an hour, where we’d talk about your responses to the three questions I’m setting (as above). You’d also be agreeing to me editing your contribution and sharing in the public domain (with an opportunity to approve your edited contribution before I share it).
2. Help me to invite others to take part — it’s really important that a wide range of stories and views are heard and shared. Perhaps you can help me to connect with and invite someone who has a very different life experience to mine to take part? It would be really helpful to me if you could help with this.

If you’d like to help, please contact me: tamsin@wilsome.co.uk and we can start the conversation about how you could be involved.

Acknowledgement

The name of this project — Secret Dreams Project — is inspired by the last line of “Book of Genesis” — a poem by Kei Miller. I read this at the On Being Project website — you can read it and hear it here too.