2023 - Collective Dreaming Youth Symposium

The Toowoomba Youth Peace Group’s 2023 Symposium ‘Collective Dreaming’ was an uplifting and successful day held on the 18th of November. Over thirty young people from Toowoomba aged 12-25 were able to come together in the symposium to express and share their individual dreams and barriers through art and discussion.
As the day progressed, we were also able to define and create our collective dream as youth to inspire future projects held by our organisation.
The first session facilitated by Basil and Beverly Kannangara was an amazing way to start the day. With the help of the Diversity By Default card game ‘Smôl Tôk’, all of the participants were able to move around the room and meet new people. Everyone learnt about the individual ideas and thoughts on diversity in the community and its
everchanging status.
 

In the following sessions, we were prompted to think about our individual hopes and dreams for the future in terms of character, career, travel, etc. and then determine the perceived barriers that were hindering us from achieving those goals. Each individual was able to express this on a postcard through art, poetry or simply words. We then widened the focus and worked as a group to decide our collective dream and depicted it in a
large collaborative space. This activity not only shifted our awareness from internal to external from the previous session but allowed us to create a united intention for the future.