Museum of London Collects Pandemic Dreams for Permanent Collection

The Museum of London, in collaboration with the Museum of Dreams at Western University in Canada, has launched Guardians of Sleep, a project collecting Londoners' dreams during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative is part of the museum's broader Collecting COVID program, which began in April 2020 to document images, memories, and objects from the pandemic. A June 2020 study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI found increased difficulty sleeping, disturbed sleep, and heightened anxiety during the pandemic, highlighting the pandemic's impact on the subconscious. Guardians of Sleep aims to gather firsthand oral accounts of dreams, adding them to the museum's permanent collection for the first time. Selected participants will discuss their dreams in 30-minute Zoom conversations with an international team of scholars in February 2021. The call is open to all London residents, with submissions due by January 15, 2021 via email. Digital Curator Foteini Aravani stated that collecting dreams as oral histories provides a more emotional and personal narrative of the pandemic for future generations, extending the definition of a museum object beyond traditional artistic impressions.