Dreamwriting the Sciences

This presentation looks at the use of Dreamwriting, the author’s own version of the rule-free warm-up technique used in adult creative writing classes, and asks if it could be useful in the teaching of and writing about sciences. Dreamwriting is a response to the Automatic Writing of surrealist Andre Breton who believed that it held the key to liberation from bourgeois idealsto the essential, uncluttered selfand the Free Writing of Peter Elbow. Elbow’s was a response to his own struggles with academic writing in an educational system which he said made ‘people who were smart think they were stupid.’ His ‘declaration of independence’ came from the analysis of his failed academic writing and the need to ‘make it good, keep control, figure out my point ahead of time with outlines.’ The research was set within the debate led by Sir Ken Robinson whose national commission on creativity, education and economy for the UK Govt in 1999 argued that anational strategy for creative and cultural educationis essential if we are to ‘ unlock the potential of every young person’ as the Government’s White Paper in 1997 suggested. Robinson concluded ‘that Britain’s economic prosperity and social cohesion depend on this.’ (Robinson 1999) Gilly Smith is a senior lecturer in Television, Radio and Journalism at the University of Brighton. She uses Dreamwriting to encourage academics and students to rediscover the passion behind their ideas and the voice to put them on the page.