The University of Essex is gathering the dreams of staff and students as part of the University of Dreams project.

Over the next two weeks staff and students at the University’s three campuses in Colchester, Southend and Loughton will be encouraged to share their dreams.

They will be asked to anonymously upload accounts of any dreams they have over the fortnight and these dreams will then be sifted and made available for viewing on the university website in the summer term.

Academics from various fields, artists and creative writers will also use the accounts of dreams as inspiration for commentaries and responses.

For example, Andrew Samuels from the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, current head of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, will be among those offering insights.

Matt Ffytche, from the University of Dreams project teams who is also an academic within the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, said: “The goal of the project is not the interpretation of individual dreams, but creating a window onto the dream-life of the university as a whole.

“The idea is to use the site as a way of bringing members of the university together outside of the usual organisational divides.

“The emphasis will be on showcasing the inner life of the University in the present, allowing people to browse the dreams rather like an ‘open house’ of Essex’s unconscious.”

The closing date for submitting dreams is Monday 28 February and the project’s web page at www.essex.ac.uk/dreams/ offers tips on how to remember and record your dreams plus information about their significance.

There will also be various linked events including an exhibition of photographs and images emerging from the dream project plus a launch event on Tuesday 3 May featuring writers Marina Warner and Iain Sinclair.

The University of Dreams team includes sociologists Róisín Ryan-Flood and Michael Halewood, Head of Corporate Marketing Claire Lindsay, lawyer Penny Brearey-Horne and Angela Treagust from Commercial Services.

For more information visit www.essex.ac.uk/dreams/