An update on ‘Collective Dreamscapes’, one of the projects created during Immersive Assembly 4 last year

In this article we have checked in with Alysha Nelson and Chipo Mapondera, to find out how they’re progressing with their Immersive Assembly prototype project, Collective Dreamscapes. It’s a wonderfully rich and nuanced project, that is both accessible, and deeply thought provoking. Not an easy line to walk! Read on to find out more from the artists themselves.

Collective Dreamscape continues to grow as an immersive non-linear journey through projection mapping, spatial audio, and ancestral ritual into a decolonised research praxis. Emerging from ethnographic research on how “crisis endings” (Zika in Brazil, Ebola in Sierra Leone, antibiotic resistance in Cambodia/Laos) diverge from lived realities, the work challenges Western linear narratives by centering Indigenous epistemologies and marginalised voices as knowledge producers. It is both a listening space and a gentle call to open perception – toward justice, repair, and the radical potential of being fully present.

Since the showcase, the project has gained powerful recognition. Verity McIntosh, Director of Immersive Arts, nominated Collective Dreamscape for the BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards, calling it “one of the most interesting pieces [I] encountered in the past year”. The work is also being developed through a residency with Northern Sustainable Futures, expanding its storyworld to include Brazil and the South East Pacific Islands.

Collective Dreamscape’s UK network includes lead technical partner XR Stories and AudioLab at the University of York; production support from Kunstraum Productions; community engagement in Liverpool with Liverpool John Moores University; public showcases with Explore York and the Norman Rea Gallery; and promotion through York Creatives and the Guild of Media Arts. This collaborative framework, aligned with the University of Oxford’s ‘After The End’ research, is enabling this work to be scaled for wider audiences.

At its heart, Collective Dreamscape is a soft revolution: not power over, but power within. By fusing ceremony with XR storytelling, the installation creates new frameworks for cross-disciplinary collaboration while holding space for memory, grief, and recovery. It asks: how might healing itself become a form of activism, and how can immersive technology become a tool for futures rooted in care?