Dream Town

The world is changing at lightning speed. We build, renew, and keep on dreaming. Cities grow into living organisms of concrete, glass, and green. Everything around us once began with an idea, a sketch on paper, a thought in someone’s mind. Big plans are often made by grown-up experts: architects, designers, engineers. They are the ones who draw the lines of the future.

But what if children stepped into the shoes of these master builders?
What would the world look like through the eyes of the youngest dreamers? Would we picnic under cotton candy trees and travel on flying carpets? Perhaps houses would be shaped like Minecraft creations, and every car and highway would be replaced by skate lanes.

In Dream Town, a light installation by Hugo Vrijdag, that is exactly what happens. Thousands of children from all over the world become the builders of the future. With pencils, paint, or markers they design their dream houses, and with them their ideal city. Maybe one day we will float in hot-air balloons between rainbow towers, or see every wall covered with flowers. Maybe the houses of the future will not stand still on the ground at all, but rise and fall to a brand-new rhythm. It is a city that has never existed before.

Dream Town shows that the imagination of children is limitless and incredibly valuable.
In schools, at daycare centers, and around kitchen tables, children are building a world where anything is possible. Every child contributes, every design matters, every idea is welcome—because a dream can never be wrong.

During GLOW this city comes to life. For eight evenings visitors can wander through Dream Town. And not only in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven does this world of childhood dreams take shape. In Best (Town Hall), Oirschot (Museum de Vier Quartieren), Helmond (Kunsthal), and Veldhoven (St. Caecilia Church), visitors can also step into these dream worlds and walk through countless neighborhoods filled with ideas and wishes.