An unexpected result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has been a sharp uptick in bizarre, unusually vivid dreams (back in April, Dazed asked an expert to find out why). Now, the Museum of London – in collaboration with the Museum of Dreams at Canada’s Western University – has announced that it intends to collect them for a new research project.
Titled “Guardians of Sleep”, the project will partly gather Londoners’ quarantine dreams for posterity, as part of an “oral history” of the pandemic. However, the researchers will also use their testimonies to explore the connections between dreams and mental health, and how dreams factor into coping with stress in a time of crisis.
“Traditionally, when museums have collected dreams it has been in the form of artistic impression, for example, paintings or drawings influenced by the events,” says Museum of London digital curator Foteini Aravani, in a press release. “However, this can often dissociate the dream from the dreamer.”
“Instead, as part of Collecting COVID, we will collect dreams as first-person oral histories with the aim to provide a more emotional and personal narrative of this time for future generations.”
Sharon Sliwinski, creator of the Museum of Dreams, adds: “This partnership with the Museum of London takes inspiration from Sigmund Freud’s description of dreams as the ‘guardians of sleep’, where dreams are seen as night watchmen helping to preserve the integrity of our mind, guarding over our capacity to articulate experiences in our own terms.”
“This new research with the Museum of London aims to provide a rich resource for further understanding the significance of dream-life as a mechanism for working through social conflict and how the pandemic has affected the human condition.”
The “Guardians of Sleep” project will begin via Zoom conversations in February 2021 – dreams interesting enough will be considered for acquisition by the Museum of London. If you live in London and have been experiencing weird or particularly vivid dreams yourself, you can volunteer to take part by emailing info@museumofdreams.org before January 15, 2021.