In Design week participants were encouraged to voice their dream projects they want to work on after the Ecovillage Design Education Course. Out of around 50 dreams, we collectively chose four that teams worked on with the method of Dragon Dreaming, a visionary process for planning, implementation and evaluation. It builds upon three principles: Inner growth, community building and service to the earth. It was created to envisage projects in the wake of the great paradigm shift we are experiencing right now – at the dusk of the Western world that we once knew.
Dreams become True
Dragon dreaming consists of four steps: dreaming, planning, doing and celebrating. Each step should occupy about 25% of the time. I’ve never celebrated that much during any project process before. Read more about Dragon Dreaming.
Dreaming is possibly the most important step in changing the world. It creates a clear picture of the world one wants to live in. Dragon Dreaming is just a structured process to help Westerners who are alienated from themselves and the world they live in to start dreaming again. It draws upon ancient traditions of collective dreaming that native tribes have been using over Millenia. I find it very logical to start change processes with dreaming. How else would you know what you want to achieve if you had no clear picture of it? And how else would you make sure the whole group walks towards the same direction if dreaming wasn’t a collective adventure?
The Four Selected Projects:
– Further developing the concept for the “Hive”, a youth center in Auroville. Find out more about the “Hive”.
– Creating new projects linked to Pitchandikulam forest and other places in nature
– Building the new community “Joy of Impermanence and Imperfection” inside Auroville
with the aim of living in self-constructed natural buildings, growing own food and having evolving roles within the group.
– Creating a role-playing game with the working title “Age of Ecology” to raise awareness for topics around ecology, community building and communication.
I chose to work on the game which we later called “The Moss Amazing Game” because moss plays a major role in it. During a circle of Dragon Dreaming we envisioned what we would like to celebrate nine month from then. The topics that evolved out of this process led us through the creation like a red thread. They included questions around the interconnectedness of both, human and nature as well as “hidden architectures” that confine us to an old way of thinking as we had previously learned about in Deep Ecology and Deep Economy.
We used these inspirations to make it a goal of the game to experience the world from a new perspective. Taking into account that hidden architectures manifest in the body we decided to create a role-playing game that would allow the players to immerse fully into another world – rather than a computer game or card game.
However, after the first round of Dragon Dreaming we realized that this tool didn’t really work for us. So we employed elements of improvisational theatre and story-telling to generate ideas of how to manifest our dreams in a hands-on game.
In a group of seven strong personalities, the group process was quite challenging. Howeve,r we started to use group building tools we had learned before. That helped us to reflect on ourselves as individuals as well as our group dynamics.
I will not write much about the game we finally came up with since every player can only play it once and I don’t want to spoil it.
After five intensive weeks in a challenging group situation, a tight schedule and many aha-moments it was finally time to say good-bye. Under a beautiful Banyan Tree we held our Closing Ceremony. Everybody received a certificate. But what counts much more for me than a piece of paper are the many friendships that have developed out of the course and the many insights into other cultures and ways of thinking.
35 young change-makers are out there now, making the world a better place for us and future generations.
Read about the other weeks of the Ecovillage Design Education Course
