A 2020 Wrap-Up from the Dream Foundry
Relevance is one of the four cornerstone values we laid for Dream Foundry, and 2020 has been a year that destroyed context so thoroughly that relevance was easy to lose. As an organization that focuses on the speculative arts, engaging with what ifs and possibilities, however implausible, is at our core. Dedication to relevance forces us to make sure we’re doing that, freshly and deliberately, with everything we do. People always need information, support, guidance. Resources. Care. That doesn’t change. The details are where everything changes.
This year, the details changed a lot.
We aren’t even three years old yet, but 2020 could have turned us into a fossil. We had a five year plan and a setup that said, “Hey, grow this way.” In March we hit a pause button on the plan and started breaking down and reconceptualizing the setup. March of 2020 did not have the same needs as January of 2020. To remain relevant, to be absolutely true to our values, we had to let go of how we thought we were going about ourselves. The forums are gone, long live the Discord. Kickstarter no more, but welcome, Flights of Foundry. The Official Media Exploration Club is still around, but thriving in the new setup very differently from its prospects under the old. It’s been joined by watch parties, productivity pacts, an upcoming seminar series, cooking live streams, and more. We have a community room available to the world, and if that isn’t the most big-tent, Dream Foundry dreaming big thing ever, I don’t know what is.
Relevance, and jumping on the moment to make sure we embraced it, means we’re never going to unpause that five year plan. It was meant to chart our way to being an organization with a thriving community who counts on us for support, with representation from across the industry and around the world. We have more growing to do, roots to send deeper, foundations to build on. But we have, more or less, reached the destination we were mapping our way to.
A generous endowment for the Monu Bose Memorial prize in art means that all our contest winners received meaningful cash prizes this year. Over 1,200 people came to Flights of Foundry, the madcap pandemic party of a convention put together in seven weeks and chock full of information and resources. We’re publishing a lot of that content on our YouTube channel, something we never foresaw having until it was suddenly vitally important that we do. We’ve published our processes and reached out to others to share what we’ve learned, helping everyone hit a level of professionalism and excellence that should and can be the fundamental norm across the industry. We’ll do more of that, and will always be available for questions and inquiries along those lines.
My personal high point? We paid our staff. Not enough, not remotely enough, but they got a stipend. Raising enough funds to guarantee I would get to do that was my favorite part of Flights of Foundry. The kindness and generosity showered on us by people willing to volunteer their time is amazing and appreciated. But volunteering is a gift, and we cannot remain relevant, or worthy, if we depend on gifts from the community we want to build and nurture. Taking this step was important to me, and the fact that this year, where crisis has folded over crisis, is the one where we made it?
I am so proud of what we’ve done.
What do you need? What do you want? What do you hope for? These are the questions we’ve been asking from the beginning. We’ll keep asking. From one month to the next, or week to week, whatever 2021 demands of us. So much was lost in 2020. We’re determined to stay. We’re determined to grow.
We have plans for next year, because of course we do. Flights of Foundry is happening again, from April 16-18. We have Goals and Planning support underway that will help you with accountability and planning throughout the year. A market rubric, translator toolkits, cross-role mentoring, are all projects we’re working to bring off the backburner and make real. The contests will happen again, and I haven’t told the coordinators yet, but I’m hoping to double the submission pool.
We’re going to meet next year head on and ready.
Thanks for dreaming with us. We’ll see you next year.
Cislyn Smith
Cislyn Smith is the secretary of the Dream Foundry and a poet and short story writer who calls Madison, Wisconsin home. Her wordy work has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Strange Horizons, and Diabolical Plots. She has been known to crochet tentacles, write stories at odd hours, play ridiculous numbers of games, make lots of lists, and study stone dead languages. She is occasionally dismayed by the lack of secret passages in her house. She lives with the amazingly photogenic kitties that appear in the Dream Foundry newsletter, and also some nice humans.
In addition to her Twitter, she can be found online on Mastodon and on Patreon.
Jessica Eanes
Jessica Eanes, also known as Anaea Lay, lives in Chicago, Illinois, where she engages in a numinous love affair with the city. She’s the fiction podcast editor for Strange Horizons, and has had her short fiction published in a variety of venues including Lightspeed, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Pod Castle. Her CYOA interactive game, "Gilded Rails" was released by Choice of Games in 2018. It features a demonic cat, an implausibly efficient accountant, and far too many potential romantic interests. For fun she reads, cooks, eats, plays board games, interrogates people about the logistics of their chosen field, and forms intricate business plans over brunch.