Dream Garden: Matt Roberts and Terri Witek

Dream Garden is a site-specific project by artist Matt Roberts (Associate Professor of Digital Arts, Stetson University), poet Terri Witek (Professor of English, Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing, Stetson University) and Michael Branton (Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science) to gather, graft and nurture a city’s dreams. Each time a city dweller texts a 7-word dream (a poetic form moving private experience into public space), that dream automatically joins others both in a “garden” (a designated physical location in the city, in this case Flagler College’s West Lawn) and online at www.intothedreamgarden.com. The project shows how some community resources – like citizens’ dreams – can inhabit and expand a space without wounding it, colonizing it, or wasting natural resources. As a political space it’s urban renewal and greening without displacement. As a philosophical space, it suggests that dreaming together may change a city and even a country. As a community garden, it suggests that our dreams aren’t wasted – they are growable, transplantable, and in the poetic space of the project, both virtual and real.

This project is in conjunction with the Other Words Conference, coordinated by the Florida Literary Arts Coalition, convening at Flagler College from November 3-5, 2016.