When Adults Dream Again: Reflections from SXSW EDU and ASU+GSV

FREE TO DREAM™ has been busy in the world of education, sharing our newest resource: the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit. Anchored by a new framework for educators, activists, and caregivers — The Five Practices for Transformative Dreaming — this resource is rooted in a simple but powerful belief: dreams have the ability to transform both individuals and communities.

The Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit offers pathways for Dreamkeepers to help young people connect with their fullest potential and imagine futures that may not yet exist, but urgently need to. In a world where youth dreams are too often deferred, we offer a vision where dreams become vehicles for realities that are more just, more joyful, and more possible.

Over the past few months, our esteemed team members and fellow educators have been on the road introducing the toolkit to communities across the country. Most recently, we hosted a workshop at SXSW EDU, bringing together educators from across the nation to explore new ideas, practices, and possibilities in education.

Our very own Kara May joined Britebound’s Michael Murphy and longtime friend and collaborator Byron Sanders for the SXSW EDU panel From Dream to Destiny. Together, they invited educators into a deeper conversation about transformation, purpose, and the importance of reconnecting with their own dreams. Attendees left inspired, revived, and reflecting on what it means to dream boldly; not only for young people, but for themselves.

“In our work with young people, we quickly realized that adults need opportunities to reconnect with their own dreams, too. And if we want youth-serving organizations to truly nurture transformation, those organizations must also have space to grow in alignment with the practices we teach. That was our work at SXSW EDU this year: supporting dreaming adults as they support dreaming youth." - Kara May, Executive Director of Arts & Partnerships, Art in Motion

Not long after SXSW EDU, we were back on the road; this time headed west for ASU+GSV alongside our partners at Britebound. There, FREE TO DREAM™’s Calvin Williams and Mike McGalliard helped spotlight the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit and the growing movement behind transformative dreaming, joined by esteemed friends and collaborators including Shawnee Caruthers, who shared a firsthand reflection on the experience and impact felt throughout the room.

Bring Me All of Your Dreams: A Moment of Collective Imagination at ASU+GSV

A reflection from Shawnee Caruthers:

“At this year’s ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, amid a program largely focused on AI and emerging technology, one session offered something unmistakably human. Bring Me All of Your Dreams: Activating Youth Potential Through ‘Dreamscaping’ brought together a panel of education and culture leaders for a workshop that asked attendees to set aside everyday constraints and imagine what could be. Mike Murphy of BriteBound moderated the conversation, joined by Shawnee Caruthers of Getting Smart, Calvin Williams of FREE TO DREAM™, and Mike McGalliard of Firebrand and FREE TO DREAM™."

The session opened with the FREE TO DREAM™ manifesto: “Once our mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers came to believe that dreams were the vehicles to take us to a new reality, we all used dreams like a sort of magic,” and from the very first line, the room shifted. People leaned in. The energy was palpable. What followed was an exercise in imagination beyond restraints. Participants were invited to picture a young person their work ultimately touches and ask: If nothing, not funding, not policy, not current systems, stood in the way, what would they want to be true for that young person’s future? From there, the room moved into crafting bold 2036 headlines, daring themselves to name the realities they’d been quietly hoping for but rarely saying out loud.

What unfolded, table by table, was a kind of collective exhale. The room was completely full and every seat was leaned in. You could feel that this group had been waiting for permission to do exactly this, to breathe, to be, to step out of the constraints of “that’s just how it works” and dream alongside one another. One of the threads that surfaced, and that the panelists returned to throughout, is that we cannot invite young people into their dreams if we haven’t tended to our own. Being in service to ourselves is the work. It’s the foundation for being a Dreamkeeper™ for someone else.

When the session ended, no one moved. People said they wanted to stay. They wanted to keep dreaming. In a summit filled with conversations about what technology can do, Bring Me All of Your Dreams offered a reminder of what only a community of humans, gathered with intention, can do together.

We were finally free to dream.”

- Shawnee Caruthers

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