How was it for you? #NUNOproject

What NUNO has created – through it’s emphasis on people and relationships – is a warm hug. Soon I will be asking the artists on the Arts Council England (ACE) funded Neither Use Nor Ornament (NUNO) project, how was it for you? I have to do this as part of my evaluation process, but I’m

I am an artist. I am also an autistic person. I live in sensory peril.

The sensory torture of a hospital environment became my reality a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been forced to reflect how much activity must be sacrificed to manage sensory stress in my life.

This is my admission to myself and to the world. Mainly, I manage my life, I am happy and I am loved. But it is very hard indeed when I am out of my bubble.

#AutisticMotherhood Misrepresented

But I think this play slipped through the net, as it were, because it’s not really about autistic motherhood (how could it be?) No – this play is about how frustrating a fictional neurotypical man finds it to have a relationship with an autism stereotype. She’s a cardboard cut-out, dude. No wonder….

Organising the butterfly brain. #Autism #ExecutiveFunction #CreativePractice

    Rare is the artist who can focus on their creative practice alone. My own professional life has become so varied that I myself struggle to balance the work that pays with my studio practice. Creative project development, managing the projects I create, my consultancy work, and mentoring, are all incredibly engrossing, rewarding and

Chris Packham – a watermark moment. #autism #actuallyautistic

Yes, Chris is an even more compelling personality as an autistic – so swallow that world. Absorb the truth that our unmasking can be your enriching. And not as a beguiling enchantment (as autism sometimes is portrayed) but as a reality – Chris didn’t smooth over the areas of intense struggle which led him to consider suicide seriously on three occasions.

The wrong autism!

I have been thinking about the constant demands to adapt to a neuro-normative culture and be the autistics others would like us to be.

Perfect storm. #autism

  The context for my poem Perfect storm is the research for my Arts Council Funded project – The Museum for Object Research. It isn’t about any one person or conversation, but more about my growing understanding of the ways in which I am disabled – despite being a competent human – by ingrained assumption

For I am human #autism

But as time eeks out its knowingness I no longer falter, for I find that I am myself (of course I am) and always was that self buried under a false persona.

Stepping out from under it was like tearing off my shadow.

A very ‘neurotypical deficit’.

Returning to the differences in processing with which I began my piece, it seems to me that as NT move speedily onwards to the next person and the next opportunity they may fail to notice many examples of autistic kindness.

What an unfortunate processing deficit that would turn out to be.