It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. ~ John Steinbeck

OVERVIEW

The Dream Registry is an interactive dream archive designed for visitors, patients, and staff at medical centers and hospitals. This project launched at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington in 2016 by creating a dream archive featuring anonymous dream accounts from the community of people that temporarily reside there. This project is now being introduced through UF Health to generate a cumulative dream archive and online database for Shands Hospital patients, visitors, and staff to anonymously record and document their dreams. The project creatively aligns the interests and goals of the medical staff, patients,

The goal of implementing an ongoing dream archive is to generate an online database whereby patients, visitors, and staff anonymously record and document their dreams and share their thoughts during their stay at hospital. The project creatively aligns the interests and goals of the medical staff, the hospital, patients, and the community served by the hospital by simultaneously promoting rest and creativity. The Dream Registry encourages patients to sleep (so they can dream) and heal. The participatory nature of the project highlights the importance of sleeping in healing but it also underscores the part of recovery that is less empirical, less rational, but still very important to the well-being of patients, loved ones, and the staff at Harborview. The interpersonal act of sharing dreams produces a temporary community of storytellers and facilitates a poetic new type of institutional record.

GOALS

The Dream Registry was created by Harborview resident artist, Sean Miller, designer Connie Hwang, and Jess Larson. The project seeks to capture the imaginations of medical professionals, volunteers, patients, caregivers, curators, authors, designers, visual artists, and community arts administrators. In addition, the Dream Registry project seeks to evoke a sense of hope, wonder, and curiosity among the patients, visitors, and staff. It is designed not to interfere or physically impede vital hospital space, while producing a high profile, well designed, inspiring, and participatory project for staff, patients, and visitors. Hospital staff members and medical workers have suggested positive project attributes include:

·       Underscoring a sense of community in hospitals
·       Encouraging rest
·       Suggesting a reflective mindset
·       Offering an outlet for creative self-expression and personal disclosure
·       Building a  dream archive to inspire future projects and interactions
·       Producing an one-of-a-kind institutional record for participating hospitals