Why Dreaming? 

Dreaming in public and in community is a powerful act. It is a pathway to thinking deeply and creatively about what a new world might look like, what we might look like doing the work of creating anti-oppressive selves, institutions & ways of being. Dreaming allows us to slow down space & time and create deep, lasting connections between & amongst ourselves. Bearing witness to our individual & collective being & dreams is a pathway towards liberation.

When the 2016 election cycle was ramping up, we, Crystal Mason & Jason Wyman, saw rising authoritarianism and the constant demonization of our comrades by both political parties, especially the Republican one. It produced increased anxiety & depression in both of us as we tried navigating our own complex lives intertwined with trauma, oppression, and death. These feelings of overwhelm, of not being able to respond, got us both dreaming separately & then together. Since Trump’s election, we’ve both been holding Spaces for Dreaming with family, comrades, and neighbors. It’s transformed our being, our relations, our cosmos. And it’s changed our family, comrades, and neighbors, too.

In A Space for Dreaming: Opening Hearts

We hold a space & time for comrades to come practice communal, dreaming. We'll seed our dreams with the question, "How can we open our heart?" We will then hold space to dream & time to reflect. We'll bring everyone together in circle and those who desire to share with each other can. As we close, comrades will be invited to share ways they can open their heart in their own life, practice, community / communities.

A Space for Dreaming is our offering to our community of Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, gender non-conforming, disabled, poor, immigrant, neurodivergent, youth, and senior community of communities. All sessions are small to ensure we can cultivate an environment of belonging, intimacy, and vulnerability. We want to bear witness to our dreams collectively because our liberation depends on it.

To learn more about how we hold space & time, read our Emerging Guide.

About Crystal Mason & Jason Wyman

Crystal Mason was formerly Co-Director of Queer Rebels and a board member since 2012. Crystal also co-founded Luna Sea Women’s Performance Space and was Executive Director of the Jon Sims Center for the Arts. In Berlin, where they lived for 9 years, they co-owned Schoko Café, a women’s art and culture center. In San Francisco, they were an organizer working with ACT UP and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and also worked on Electric City Queer TV. Recently, they co-produced the multimedia theater piece Hey, Sailor and created 3 short films: In My Blood, I Know My Soul, and In My Own Hands. In 2016 they created a multimedia performance/installation at Fort Mason as part of the THIS IS WHAT I WANT Festival 2016 titles There is No Other, Fractured And Complete, Tell Me Something True. Find Crystal on Instagram & Twitter.

Jason Wyman is Queerly Complex, an anti-binary social practice artist living & creating on Yelamu, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land or what colonizers named San Francisco. A mystical convener, Wyman creates spaces for comrades to explore & discover who they be individually & collectively. They work with dreams, value(s), structures, & equity to conjure forms of liberation & healing. Wyman's art-making centers the messy, intangible, emotive, & esoteric bits that make us human. It's resulted in a large-scale, participatory sticker mural with artists Celi Tamayo-Lee & Mary-Claire Amable for the Asian Art Museum, a national Youth Media Network co-produced with Myah Overstreet, a fully immersive installation at Black & White Projects called Be Jason, & numerous zines, site-speciic performances, social interventions, and intergenerational programs. Find Jason on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Queering Dreams is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media.