World Sleep Day 2026 - Free Event

This year's World Sleep Day theme is Sleep Well, Live better.

As part of World Sleep Day, the Neuroscience and Psychology of Sleep (NaPS) lab at CUBRIC, Cardiff University, are hosting a public event with talks from our sleep researchers, guest speakers and a range of posters and interactive stalls.

Get your ticket today for free. This is an in-person event.

Speakers:

• Al Saqib, PhD Student at Neuroscience and Psychology of Sleep (NaPS) lab, CUBRIC

  "Dreams and World Models: Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality" 

• Liam Mahedy, PhD Research and Evaluation Fellow & Research, Data & Digital Directorate, Public Health Wales

  "Disentangling the relationship between sleep and mental health and wellbeing in young people"

• Keren Rogerson, Level 6 Qualified Sleep Practitioner, Sleep Well Wales

  "Small Changes, Better Sleep: Insights from a sleep practitioner"

• Emeritus Professor Mark Blagrove, Swansea University

  "Why do we dream and how does the brain produce dreams?"

  There is longstanding debate as to whether dreams are fleeting, nonsensical and have no function, versus having a function of processing emotions or memories while we sleep. This talk will present a new, third option. Humans have evolved to have complex dreams because of the group-bonding and empathy effects of telling dreams after we wake. The talk will present evidence for this view, and the audience will discuss these different views as to whether dreaming has a function. The talk will also present newly published findings on brain injury and dreaming, the evaluation of the use of ChatGPT for dream interpretation, and lucid nightmares, in which the nightmare sufferer knows it is a dream but cannot wake up!

Dream workshop – A discussion of an attendee’s dream with live painting of the dream

Emeritus Professor Mark Blagrove, Swansea University, and Emeritus Professor Julia Lockheart, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

Be part of a dream salon, a live art and science happening, where a recent dream of an attendee is discussed while the dream is painted live onto pages taken from Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams. In this multisensory performance we will trace back the dream to the waking life concerns and experiences that created the dream, while watching the dream take visual form in the artwork.

The discussion of the dream will be moderated by Mark Blagrove using the group dream discussion method devised by psychoanalyst Montague Ullman. The method aims to map the dream onto the very recent emotional experiences of the dreamer. The dream painting will be performed live by artist Julia Lockheart. People who have had their dreams interpreted and drawn by this exciting art science collaboration have had ‘aha’ experiences when the links to waking life are discovered!

Continuing Professional Development certificates will be awarded to psychotherapy and counselling professionals attending the dream workshop. Research inspired by these workshops has led to the evolutionary theory that dream-sharing causes empathy and group bonding.    

For more information and artworks see DreamsID.com and The Science and Art of Dreaming (Routledge, 2023).

Stalls & Posters

• Keren Rogers, Level 6 sleep practitioner, Fortitude Mums

• Hapus, Public Health Wales Mental Health Initiative

• Foods good for our sleep, NaPS

• Overnight Therapy: Emotional memory manipulation for PTSD and Depression

• Can eye masks improve our sleep?

• Sleep Lab Tours