This website is about DREAMS. I use the ‘DREAMS framework’ to reflect on the ‘existential purpose’, the deeper purpose, of our doing the things that we do. DREAMS – Dialogue, Reflection, Ethics, Awareness, Meditation and Storytelling – is a way of thinking about thinking that ought not to be neglected even by the more practical as it ensures that intiatives have a solid foundation and that understandings can be fully shared.

STEAM and DREAMS

Following a discussion about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) with university academics who wanted to reach out to local businesses and community organisations, I suggested that the entities, Netstorms Unlimited and Newham Mosaic, that I’ve been working on for a while, with their partners, could complement the STEAM agendas and focus of institutions through a focus on DREAMS:

Dialogue: Open, respectful communication to foster understanding and connection, creating a space for meaningful exchanges across diverse perspectives.
Reflection: Thoughtful consideration of experiences, ideas, and actions, promoting insight and deeper understanding of oneself and the surrounding world.
Ethics: Guiding principles focused on integrity, empathy, and responsibility, ensuring decisions align with values that respect individuals and the environment.
Awareness: Cultivating mindfulness and perceptiveness, encouraging attentiveness to both inner states and the external environment to respond consciously.
Meditation: Practices for grounding and focus, enhancing mental clarity and emotional balance, fostering a sense of peace, presence and connection.
Storytelling: Creating and sharing narratives to express ideas, emotions, imagination and identities, enriching community by connecting through shared and unique experiences.

While STEAM provides a technical and academic foundation that permits us to, well, ‘steam ahead’, DREAMS provide a necessary contextualising dimension to our engagement with technology. Together, they can provide a holistic perspective that embraces both technological advancement and human purpose. A space of BEING from which we can reflect on DOING.

Science, technology and the rest and tools are there to serve human purpose. By looking at DREAMS we are trying to understand Human BEING and its relationship to Human DOING.

Netstorms Unlimited links to all my writing and community engagement on Newham Mosaic, the Facebook Conscious Conversations Group, and on Medium. It is my most central website.