Dream Lafayette was a project EAC produced in collaboration with LESAC (the Lafayette Energy Sustainability Action Committee) and LCAC (the Lafayette Cultural Arts Commission, with the help of Airworks Studio (Melanie Walker and George Peters), and others. It included arts and sustainability activities and information offered during three monthly Art Nights Out summer festival events designed to engage passersby and inspire them to think about renewable energy and their City in new ways.

Dream Lafayette was created with and for the City of Lafayette and was based on Dream Boulder, a similar project co-created through a collaboration of EAC with the City of Boulder’s Planning Department, Airworks, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Arts, performance artist Michelle Ellsworth, and video artist Max Bernstein, among others.

The purpose of Dream Lafayette was to ally with the arts to attract curiosity about, interest in, and participation with LESAC’s three campaigns: residential EnergySmart, Green Business, and Solarize. Dream Lafayette also encouraged passersby of all ages to creatively reflect on their own lives and draw and write their ideas for a sustainable Lafayette.

Dream Lafayette included a roped off area with kids’ sized tables and chairs, paper, sticky notes of all sizes, and art supplies to generate “idea pages” illustrating and/or describing their energy, sustainability, arts, and other ideas for Lafayette. The idea pages were pinned to clotheslines where they were on display for others to read and often inspired and encouraged people to “enter” the Dream Lafayette area, which then opened more opportunities for conversations about sustainability.

Next to the arts area, LESAC had a tent with tables of information and volunteers to talk to people about their campaigns, along with brochures about LESAC activities and LCAC arts programs as well. EAC middle school theatre students dressed in hazmat suits decorated with their renewable energy and nature drawings gave instant pop up performances of sustainability-inspired rap poetry they had written to Art Night Out attendees in the street, encouraging them to enter the Dream Lafayette area and LESAC tent. The idea pages were multiple and wide-ranging, giving LESAC and LCAC valuable feedback for their activities then and in the future.