Dream Bigger. Lead Differently.

This year, we brought the core message of FREE TO DREAM™ into classrooms, communities, and conversations across the country: the message that we are all free to dream.

After sharing the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit this spring at SXSW EDU and ASU+GSV alongside our incredible partner, Britebound, we continued the journey this summer at the NAF Conference and the inaugural JAG EDGE Conference. Each gathering reaffirmed something we had come to understand more deeply: before we can cultivate the dreams of young people, we must create spaces where adults can reconnect with their own dreams.

“This was not always something we were willing to name in our work. In our early stages, some of us were still shaped by the very “adult micro-visioning” we now know must be debunked if we are going to restore adults as dreamers who can truly support and serve dreaming young people. It took seeing what happened at our first Chicago Summit—a room full of adults invited to consider their own dreams through a series of questions and the guidance of an insightful facilitator—to make the truth undeniable. The beauty of that experience helped us understand that dreaming adults are not peripheral to this work; they are essential to it.” - Kara May, Executive Director of Arts and Partnerships

The NAF Conference offered an intimate space to gather with 35 educators, school leaders, and changemakers deeply committed to creating brighter futures for young people. While the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit was designed to help youth advocates nurture the dreams of youth through the Five Practices for Transformative Dreaming, the conversations that unfolded revealed something equally important: adults want to dream, too.

Participants reflected on the dreams they had set aside, the hopes they still carried, and the responsibility they feel to create environments where young people can imagine realities that may not yet exist, but should. Throughout the session, educators shared stories of resilience, possibility, and the transformative impact of believing in a young person’s dreams—not only for individual lives, but for entire communities.

“We unlock dreams not by shrinking them to fit the constraints of the world, but by expanding the world to hold the fullness of our dreams” — Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit

We traveled to California for the inaugural JAG EDGE Conference, where the FREE TO DREAM™ team came together to create an immersive experience centered around Practice Three of the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit: Dreamscaping™.

Dreamscaping™: Taking dreams into expansive spaces of imagination to explore what’s audacious, improbable, or even impossible.

Leaders from California, Texas, Maryland, Louisiana and other locations joined together accepting the invitation to spark their imagination, reflection, and possibility. Kara May invited attendees to take a chance on themselves by reconnecting with the dreams they once held, beginning with a simple exercise: each person pulled a Dreamscaping™ card posing reflective questions such as:

What about your dream is healing something in you?

What if your dream grew 100 times larger than it is now?

Within minutes, the room shifted. What began as introductions became something more vulnerable as educators, leaders, and changemakers gave voice to dreams they hadn’t spoken aloud in years.

That sense of possibility carried into Mike McGalliard’s reflection on the genesis of the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit and its Five Practices for Transformative Dreaming™, offering a new framework to help youth use their dreams to change life outcomes. Calvin Williams closed the session by inviting everyone to leap into the future and imagine what could be true for young people if nothing stood in their way.

If the conversations in this room are any indication, the future won’t be shaped by people with all the answers—it will be shaped by those willing to keep asking bigger questions. We hope you’ll join us at the next gathering and be part of what’s unfolding.

“The quiet revelation of this session was that those of us who spend our careers helping young people dream have often stopped tending our own. Writing a headline from the future (a big dream, no limitations) reminded me that the practice isn’t just something we facilitate for students; it’s something WE need. Sitting with other educators as we all worked that out was the best part. Great presentation! Much-needed reminder of the WHY in our work.”

— Christine Rodriguez, Director of Curriculum, NAF

Each conference reminded us that dreaming doesn’t expire as we grow into the people entrusted with helping young people imagine and create their futures.

When youth advocates reconnect with their own dreams, they become better equipped to nurture the dreams of the young people they serve. That is the heart of the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit: a set of five practices that cultivate belonging, awareness, creativity, resilience and gratitude, whereby dreams become vehicles for more just and joyful futures.

As we continue sharing this work across the country, we’re inspired by the growing community of Dreamkeepers™ who are choosing to lead with hope, creativity, and the belief that every young person deserves the opportunity to dream and the support to bring those dreams to life.

Continue the journey. Explore the Dreamkeeper™ Resource Kit.