Dolly Hopkins - Creative Architect & Celebrations Facilitator; Co-founder, Public Dreams Society publicdreams.org , 2010legaciesnow.com
by Stephanie MacDonald
It seems fitting that the woman best known for inspiring thousands of Vancouverites to parade around Trout Lake in the dark with homemade lanterns recently found herself in China. But while lanterns are emblematic of the People’s Republic, far-out parties… not so much.
Nevertheless, Dolly Hopkins, whose legacies with Public Dreams include both the Illuminares Lantern Procession and the Parade of the Lost Souls, was conscripted as a keynote speaker on celebration facilitation by the United Nations last November in Nanjing.
The UN event was a few firewalking steps removed from a lantern festival featuring elaborately attired jesters and fairies on stilts, or a menagerie of lost souls wafting down Commercial Drive toward a spooky musical rendezvous. But Public Dreams was just the starting point for Dolly’s creative aspirations.
“We created Public Dreams because we felt that many people had lost their opportunity to see themselves as creative individuals,” she explains. “We started to outsource entertainment, instead of creating it. Our events invited people to see themselves as creative beings again.”
Since leaving Public Dreams in 2007, Dolly’s taken on international challenges, including acting as creative director behind Canada’s cultural contribution to the Summer Olympics in Athens—a wildly popular performance involving firewalkers and stilt dancers—and working with 2010 Legacies Now and Spirit B.C. to inspire communities to creatively celebrate the province during the Winter Olympics here next year.
In addition to literally writing the book on community event production (her “Celebrations Tool Kit” is available on the 2010 Legacies Now website), she’s eager to spread her festive know-how to communities all over the globe. But despite all this adventure, Dolly has a simple view of her career. “I see myself as a catalyst for people to express themselves. Creativity is the soul that makes us human.”
