Table of Contents
- 🧭 Our Mission: Real Help Against the Onslaught
- 🔦 Welcome to this house. We find our people.
- 👏🧷⏰ Stimpunks in a Minute
- 📓🧐 Our Pillars ⛑️🧰
- ❤️ Keep on Livin’
- 🔔 Our “Moment of Obligation”
- 📖 Our Story: Challenging the Norm and Changing the Narrative
- 🌱 It is time to celebrate our interdependence. The parts we need to survive are scattered All amongst us.
- 🌊 Bodymind Break
- 🐇🕳️🌈 Down the Rabbit Hole: We’ve Got Space for You
- 🖼️ Our Ways of Being
- ⛺️ We Are a NeurodiVenture
- ⚖️ Our Creed
- 🎸 Our Rules of Punk
- 🔈 Testimonials
- 📢 Announcements
- 🎪 Upcoming Events
- 🎨 Featured Artist: Adriel Jeremiah Wool
- ⛰️ A Journey Through the Rough Terrain of Lived Experience
- Coming Up: 📚🌈♿️ An Encyclopedia of Disability and Difference
🧭 Our Mission: Real Help Against the Onslaught
What does that mean?
Easy Read Version of Our Mission Statements
- Stimpunks is a community created by and for neurodivergent and disabled people.
- We offer support and assistance to each other.
- We provide grants to creators within our community.
- We offer opportunities for learning and growth.
- We conduct research that focuses on the needs and experiences of neurodivergent and disabled people.
- We pay fair wages to members of our community.
- We believe in the abilities and potential of all individuals.
- We believe in the right to make decisions for oneself.
- Being disabled in a society that favors able-bodied individuals is challenging.
- We provide real help to combat these challenges.
- We believe that providing direct support to individuals is the best way to help neurodivergent and disabled people overcome barriers and thrive.
AI Disclosure: The summary above was created with the help of Elephas AI Assistant.
The above is an “accordion”. It expands when you click or tap it. Try it out now to read our mission statements in an easy read format with one idea presented per line.
What is “mutual aid”?
Put simply, mutual aid is a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions by building relationships, networks of reciprocity, and communal autonomy from the state. Mutual aid may involve work to support people impacted by harmful systems and work to create alternative infrastructure. It can take the form of ride sharing, disaster response, food distribution, and much more, as you’ll soon see.
However, those engaging in mutual aid must ask themselves if their actions are providing material relief, avoiding legitimising oppressive systems, mobilising people for ongoing struggle, and accomodating marginalised groups. Mutual aid is not meant to be charity. It must actively cultivate liberatory skills, practices, and solidarity.
How We Can Change The World – YouTube
- Mutual aid is a form of political participation where people care for each other and work to change political conditions.
- It involves building relationships, networks of reciprocity, and autonomy from the state.
- Mutual aid can include things like ride sharing, disaster response, and food distribution.
- It is not charity, but rather an active cultivation of liberatory skills, practices, and solidarity.
- Mutual aid projects meet survival needs and build shared understanding.
- They mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
- Mutual aid projects are participatory and solve problems through collective action.
- Autistic communities are embracing ideas of mutual aid and collective care.
- Mutual aid groups aim to fill gaps in services left by the government.
- Disabled love and care is different from non-disabled interactions.
- Mutual aid is based on a sense of human solidarity and the recognition of the force borrowed from practicing mutual aid.
- Kropotkin’s ideas on mutual aid are relevant and being rediscovered by new generations of social movements.
- Mutual aid should be a foundational concept in social revolutionary projects.
Mutual aid is collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them. Those systems, in fact, have often created the crisis, or are making things worse.
Three Key Elements of Mutual Aid
Mutual Aid (Oct 27, 2020 edition) | Open Library
- Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
- Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
- Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.
What is mutual aid?
“Solidarity, not charity.”
Collective Community Care: Dreaming of Futures in Autistic Mutual Aid
- Interdependence, understanding and support
- Gives opportunity to help & care for other in on our own terms and within our own capacities
- Direct support in a community within a community
- It’s much easier to practice asking, offering, receiving, and declining among people who “get it”!
Moving from a rights-based perspective to a justice-based one necessitates a look at our care systems and re-envisioning how our communities function to ensure no one is left behind.
Collective Community Care: Dreaming of Futures in Autistic Mutual Aid, Autscape: 2020 Presentations
Non-disabled people in my life don’t know how to love me like disabled people do. I’m so thankful for all my disabled friends who know how to provide care, rest, support and love. Disabled love is critically different from my other interactions with the world. 1/4
I really wish non-disabled people could learn to love in the same caring modalities. Love looks like remembering my food intolerances. Love looks like saying “that sucks” when I complain. Love looks like calling to check in and telling me stories. 2/4
Love looks like someone bustling around at home doing everyday things that wanted to call just to be with me across time and space. Love looks like not trying to fix everything and just allowing bad days to be bad. Love looks accepting my need to isolate as much as possible. 3/4
Originally tweeted by Nicole Lee Schroeder, PhD (@Nicole_Lee_Sch) on April 15, 2022.
Mutual aid, a factor of evolution (1903 edition) | Open Library
Is Kropotkin relevant again? Well, obviously, Kropotkin was always relevant, but this book is being released in the belief that there is a new, radicalized generation, many of whom have never been exposed to these ideas directly, but who show all signs of being able to make a more clear-minded assessment of the global situation than their parents and grandparents, if only because they know that if they don’t, the world in store for them will soon become an absolute hellscape.
Introduction to Mutual Aid | The Anarchist Library
What is “human-centered learning”?
A human-centered education:
- Cultivates Purpose-Driven Classrooms
- Ends Dehumanizing Practices
- Demands Social Justice
- Builds a Human-Centered World
Build human-centered classrooms around four values:
What is the Human Restoration Project?
- Learning is rooted in purpose-finding and community relevance.
- Social justice is the cornerstone to educational success.
- Dehumanizing practices do not belong in schools.
- Learners are respectful toward each others innate human worth.
Cultivate purpose-driven classrooms by promoting experiential learning & community connection.
Research supports what teachers intuitively understand: that students ask fewer questions the longer they remain in school and engagement steadily declines over time.
“Promoting curiosity in children, especially those from environments of economic disadvantage, may be an important, underrecognized way to address the achievement gap. Promoting curiosity is a foundation for early learning that we should be emphasizing more when we look at academic achievement.”
At the same time, rates of depression and anxiety have steadily increased to become among the most diagnosed mental health disorders in children. Kids who feel isolated from school and their community frequently drop out turn to self-harm and self-medication through alcohol and drugs.
A Human-Centered Education: Cultivates Purpose-Driven Classrooms – YouTube
End dehumanizing classroom practices by lessening & removing grades, homework, and behaviorism.
Assigning a grade instead of purely focusing on feedback leads to decreased motivation and understanding, lower academic achievement, and increased rates of cheating. We may not ever be able to get rid of grades entirely, but diminishing the salience of grades and grading is necessary if we desire to shift from a teacher-centered language of grading to a student-driven language of learning in the classroom.
Where behaviorism fails to foster agency it simultaneously creates a framework for excluding neurodivergent and disabled students while enabling the policing of students from non-dominant cultural, linguistic, and racial backgrounds.
A Human-Centered Education: Ends Dehumanizing Practices – YouTube
Inclusive classrooms are more than a legal obligation. Inclusion means instruction and assessment are created with a universal design in mind, one that draws from perspectives and ways of understanding beyond white, middle-class heteronormative and neurotypical perspectives and supports students in varied means of acting on and expressing their learning.
Nearly every nation on earth has been impacted by a history of colonization. In the United States in particular, we must also contend with the legacy of genocide, slavery, segregation, and inequity built into the foundation of our country. This history manifests today in part through the racialized outcomes of the prison-industrial complex and dehumanizing culture of policing imposed on all of our institutions, including school.
A Human-Centered Education: Demands Social Justice – YouTube
Build a human-centered world: focus on collaboration over competition & ensure a thriving public education system.
While schools exist as a microcosm of society, schools also exist in dialogue with society and as a multiplier of its generative and destructive traits. When societies adopt the language of the market that rewards competition over collaboration, conflict over solidarity, and short-term individual gain over long-term mutual sustainability, it should not surprise us when school policies and practices reflect the same.
Think of how we describe academic achievement in schools through the language of scarcity – achievement gaps, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, good schools vs failing schools, student loan debt, GPAs and class rank – the socioeconomic context of any of these metrics is inseparable from what they purport to measure and reward. And what they communicate is clear: that children who grow up in proximity to wealth reap the academic and socioeconomic benefits.
A Human-Centered Education: Builds a Human-Centered World – YouTube
What is “human-centered research”?
Hale contends that researchers who engage in cultural critique are committed to the research institution while activist researchers have dual commitments to the people and their political struggle and the academy (2006, p. 100). And it is this dual commitment that transforms the methodology beginning with the research topic and ending with the production of knowledge that is not only useful but transformative (Hale, 2001). Thus, activist research is an emerging research framework that shifts the focus from traditional knowledge production to commitment to working with others to produce transformative change. Traditional research methods such as ethnography, action research, and feminist research are situated within an activist research framework, leaving the means intact, but striving to change the ends.
From Theorizing in the Ivory Tower to Creating Change with the People: Activist Research as a Framework for Collaborative Action
Concerns have also been raised about the quality and rigour of autism research. For example, researchers have highlighted key omissions in the reporting of research, such as failures to declare conflicts of interest (Bottema-Beutel & Crowley, 2021) or the presence of adverse events (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2021). Concerns have also extended to the low standards underlying evidence-based practice (Bottema-Beutel, 2023) as well as replication failures (Gernsbacher & Yergeau, 2019). As Dawson and Fletcher-Watson (2021, p.1) note, the standards of research quality and ethics have not been applied to autism research to the extent that they should, which has “profoundly impacted how autistics are regarded and treated”.
Two potential solutions have been proposed in relation to these aforementioned issues. The first solution regards greater involvement of the autistic and broader autism communities in research: in identifying research priorities, in deciding the design and conduct of research, in analysing and interpreting research findings, and in disseminating research more broadly (e.g., Pellicano et al., 2014). In essence, this solution involves shifting the traditional power balance in research from autism researchers to the autistic and broader autism communities. Participatory approaches such as these are thought to lead to better quality research that is more easily translated into practice (Balazs & Morello-Frosch, 2013; Forsythe et al., 2019).
The second solution regards greater openness and transparency in the reporting of research (Hobson, Poole, Pearson & Fletcher-Watson, 2022). Open research is an umbrella term for several practices, underpinned by a desire for the products and processes of research to be accessible to those outside of the original research team (Munafo et al., 2017). Open scientific practices are closely aligned with efforts to improve research reproducibility, and reduce the risk of grey research practices, such as hypothesising after results are known (HARKing; Kerr, 1998), and over-analysing data (“p-hacking”; Simmons et al., 2011).
In this paper, we discuss how combining participatory and open research practices may go some way toward addressing key issues inherent within autism research. First, we define both open research and participatory research. Then, we outline three key principles for autism researchers striving to make their work more open and participatory: (1) the need for adequate expertise and infrastructure to facilitate high quality research, (2) the need for a greater degree of accessibility at all stages of the research process, and (3) the need to foster trusting relationships between the autistic and research communities. Throughout this paper, we draw on examples from literature both within and outside the autism research field, and we conclude with reflections on how this may foster an autism research culture that better serves the autistic and broader autism communities.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Towards Reproducible and Respectful Autism Research: Combining Open and Participatory Autism Research Practices
Accordions labelled “What is…” provide definitions, context, and further reading.
Header art: “Sphere of Humanity: A Traverse Gift of Energetic Connectedness” by Heike Blakley is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
🔦 Welcome to this house. We find our people.
Find Your People
Did you ever feel
That you don't quite belong
Just hold on
And go find your people
Find your people
Opening doors has become my calling
Welcome to this house
All Hail Open Doors by Swamburger and Scarlet Monk of Mugs and Pockets
Often you don’t realize how lonely and frightened you’ve been the whole time, until you find your people.
Until one day… you find a whole world of people who understand.
We were no longer alone.
7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture » NeuroClastic
Autistic kids need access to autistic communities. They need access to autistic mentors. They need to know that the problems they go through are actually common for many of us! They need to know they are not alone. They need to know that they matter and people care about them. They need to see autistic adults out in the world being accommodated and understood and respected. They need to learn how to understand their own alexithymia and their own emotions. They need to be able to recognize themselves in others. They need to be able to breathe.
AutisticSciencePerson
Until one day… you find a whole world of people who understand.
We were no longer alone.
7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture » NeuroClastic
We use accordions to expand on a topic without interrupting the main flow. Click/tap this accordion to learn about the importance of finding community.
👏🧷⏰ Stimpunks in a Minute
Stimpunks combines “stimming” + “punks” to evoke open and proud stimming, resistance to normalization, and the DIY culture of punk, disabled, and neurodivergent communities. Instead of hiding our stims, we bring them to the front.
Stimpunks Foundation challenges the typical approach to helping people who are neurodivergent or disabled.
We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community.
Stimpunks knows that neurodivergent and disabled people have human needs, not special needs.
We offer a humane approach to help our community thrive.
Through Stimpunks Foundation, we:
- Offer financial and mutual aid;
- Hire our community members as consultants;
- Provide a learning space designed for our community; and
- Support our community’s open research efforts.
One in four U.S. adults have a disability. However, our community receives only 2% of US grant funding, and only 19% of us are employed. We can’t just let that be the truth. We have to challenge the norm and change the narrative around people who are neurodivergent or disabled.
Stimpunks Foundation seeks to do just that with our four pillars.
📓🧐 Our Pillars ⛑️🧰
📓 Learning Space
Stimpunks Learning Space offers community and space for passion-based, human-centered learning with purpose. Our learners collaborate on distributed, multiage, cross-disciplinary teams with a neurodiverse array of creatives doing work that impacts community. Via equity, access, empathy, and inclusivity, we create anti-ableist space for the neurodivergent and disabled people most ill-served by “empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity“.
🧐 Open Research
Our emancipatory research efforts focus on the sweet spot of digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. We improve the scientific
experience for the disabled and the
neurodivergent by restoring the humanities. We bring voice into empirical constructs and translate voice into academic comprehension.
⛑️ Mutual Aid
Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society. We provide real help against the onslaught through mutual aid. We believe that direct support to individuals is the most effective approach to alleviating the barriers and challenges that prevent neurodivergent and disabled people from thriving.
🧰 Creator Grants
We pay creators to create. We buy space to breathe and make. Creativity is a vital force that drives positive change in society. We provide financial support to creators across various fields, including art, advocacy, research, and beyond. We aim to enable creators to fully immerse themselves in their work. We recognize the importance of investing in the creative process and the impact it can have on communities and individuals.
Respect due to learning with an arsenal of permanent pillars Piercing through the surface of artificial services Life Commits by Swamburger and Scarlet Monk of Mugs and Pockets
Learn More About Our Pillars
Stimpunks Foundation sponsors and employs neurodivergent and disabled creators and amplifies their work to our clients and throughout society. We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.
We complement mutual aid to creators with learning spaces for creators. Stimpunks Foundation serves neurodivergent and disabled people unserved by public and private schools. Via equity, access, empathy, and inclusivity, we build community learning space respectful of all types of bodyminds.
We pursue passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability. We create paths to equity and access for our learners. We create Cavendish space of peer respite and collaborative niche construction where we can find relief from an intense world designed against us.
Our research initiative focuses on the sweet spot of digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. We want to improve the scientific experience for the disabled and the neurodivergent by restoring the humanities. We want to bring voice into empirical constructs and translate voice into academic comprehension.
We also help businesses and organizations increase their knowledge and practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) by analyzing company practices and coaching leaders to dismantle ableism in their spaces. According to the Harvard Business Review, “There are more than one billion people worldwide – around 15% of the population – living with a disability. As workers, they can ease talent shortages and add to the organizational diversity that drives better decision-making and innovation.” Neurodiversity-friendly forms of collaboration hold the potential to transform pathologically competitive and toxic teams and cultures into highly collaborative teams and larger cultural units that work together easier and with more success.
Our additional services include digital and physical accessibility audits, sensitivity reads, and other offerings that focus on increasing DEI in the workplace. Client services are how we live our mission to employ neurodivergent and disabled people as well as how we raise capital for grantmaking.
❤️ Keep on Livin’
Our pillars are how we serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
We provide real help against the onslaught.
We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
Look up to the sky, sky, sky Take back your own tonight You'll find more than you see It's time now, now, get ready
This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and
You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Keep On Livin' by Le Tigre
We use music all over our website to help us tell our stories. “Keep On Livin’” is a song by and for trauma survivors. It’s the theme song for our mission.
🔔 Our “Moment of Obligation”
Stimpunks was created to forge the way for educational inclusion and to give our community the means to thrive. We as a disabled and neurodivergent run organization had to roll our own education, because even the “all means all” of public education failed to include us and those we serve. We had to create our own care systems, because “we realized that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.” “Responsibility for the survival of entire communities lies with us.”
In other words…
One Idea Per Line
- Stimpunks was created to advocate for educational inclusion and empower our community.
- As a disabled and neurodivergent organization, we had to create our own education because public and private education did not include us.
- We had to establish our own care systems because we recognized that the only ones who consistently work for our liberation are ourselves.
- We believe that responsibility for the survival of entire communities lies with us.
One Paragraph Summary
Stimpunks is a disabled and neurodivergent-run organization that was created to address the lack of educational inclusion and support for their community. They have developed their own educational programs and care systems to ensure that the needs of disabled and neurodivergent individuals are met. Inspired by the Combahee River Collective, Stimpunks emphasizes the importance of self-care and self-determination, recognizing that the responsibility for the well-being and liberation of their community lies with the community itself. Their goal is to empower their community to thrive and advocate for their rights and inclusion in society.
Five Paragraph Summary
Stimpunks is an organization that was created with the aim of promoting educational inclusion and providing support for the disabled and neurodivergent community. The founders of Stimpunks, who are themselves disabled and neurodivergent, recognized the lack of inclusivity in public and private education systems and decided to take matters into their own hands.
One of the ways Stimpunks addresses this issue is by offering their own educational programs. They have developed courses that cater to the specific needs and learning styles of disabled and neurodivergent individuals. By creating their own education, Stimpunks ensures that the content is accessible and relevant to their community.
In addition to education, Stimpunks also focuses on creating care systems that meet the needs of their community. They understand that the responsibility for the well-being and liberation of the disabled and neurodivergent community lies with the community itself. They have taken inspiration from the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist organization, which emphasized the importance of self-care and self-determination.
Stimpunks recognizes that traditional systems often fail to adequately support marginalized communities, and they have taken it upon themselves to fill this gap. By creating their own education and care systems, they are empowering their community to thrive and take control of their own destinies.
Stimpunks’ approach is not limited to education and care alone. They also advocate for the rights and inclusion of disabled and neurodivergent individuals in society at large. Through their work, Stimpunks aims to challenge the existing systems and create a more inclusive and equitable world for all.
AI Disclosure: The summaries above were created with the help of Elephas AI Assistant.
Accordions labelled “In other words…” explain things in different ways, including easy read, one idea per line, and plain language summaries.
Remember to
breathe, Love.
For you are alive.
Elevate care as infrastructure.
We need a counterculture of care.
The philosophers Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher lay out five key elements of care…virtues to be developed if you wanted to APPLY an ethics of care to things in your life. Think of this as a sort of HOW TO manual for moral maturity UNDER an ethics of care. These virtues IN ORDER are:
Episode #168 – Introduction to an Ethics of Care — Philosophize This!
- Attentiveness
- Responsibility
- Competence
- Responsiveness
- Plurality
Episode #168 -Transcript — Philosophize This!
- Care work makes all other work possible.
- Putting care—not just care work, but care—at the center of our economy, our politics, is to orient ourselves around our interdependence.
- Care is an organizational structure needed to keep our nation running. It’s, by definition, infrastructure.
- Health is at the center of the human experience.
- We need a counterculture of care.
- I feel that that the fundamental property of humanness is to fill those spaces where humanity has been abandoned with love. Those who would change the system have to begin with love, and with the vision to build geographies of care built from that love.
- Reframing is self-care and social change.
- Those who are the most sensitive and traumatised and have not lost the ability to extend trust constitute an enormously rich and diverse repository of insights and hold many of the keys needed for co-creating ecologies of care.
- Create more anti-ableist spaces. Let’s act to hold ALL spaces accountable for providing care and access to disabled folks with all types of bodies and minds.
- We can start building more accessible, care-centered communities now. We can combat ableism now. We can lay the groundwork for a world that works better for all of us.
Care is not charity or kindness. Care is the deeply fraught, complex, abolitionist, political work of protecting one another and the planet, meeting everyone’s needs in balance with the collective good, and keeping our communities safe without the use of policing.
Freedom requires care because freedom is not just a right—it is also a responsibility. Freedom means getting to be our whole selves, in community with other whole selves, without any threat to or assault on our well-being. Freedom means an experience of daily life in which each of us is fully seen and affirmed, treated with unconditional dignity and care, and embraced as an invaluable person of immeasurable worth. Freedom, then, sets an incredibly high standard for community life. It requires that every member of the collective work toward the goals of protection, safety, and unconditional care for all people and for the natural world.
Are We Teaching Care or Control?
The activities that constitute care are crucial for human life. We defined care in this way: Care is “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our “world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Fisher and Tronto, 1990, p. 40).
Several aspects of this definition of care are noteworthy: First, we describe care as a “species activity,” a philosophical term we use because it suggests that how people care for one another is one of the features that make people human. Second, we describe care as an action, as a practice, not as a set of principles or rules. Third, our notion of care contains a standard, but a flexible one: We care so that we can live in the world as well as possible. The understanding of what will be good care depends upon the way of life, the set of values and conditions, of the people engaged in the caring practice.
Furthermore, caring is a process that can occur in a variety of institutions and settings.
Care is found in the household, in services and goods sold in the market, in the workings of bureaucratic organizations in contemporary life. Care is not restricted to the traditional realm of mother’s work, to welfare agencies, or to hired domestic servants but is found in all of these realms. Indeed, concerns about care permeate our daily lives, the institutions in the modern marketplace, the corridors of government. Because we tend to follow the traditional division of the world into public and private spheres and to think of caring as an aspect of private life, care is usually associated with activities of the household. As a result, caring is greatly undervalued in our culture- in the assumption that caring is somehow “women’s work,” in perceptions of caring occupations, in the wages and salaries paid to workers engaged in provision of care, in the assumption that care is menial. One of the central tasks for people interested in care is to change the overall public value associated with care. When our public values and priorities reflect the role that care actually plays in our lives, our world will be organized quite differently.
An Ethic of Care on JSTOR
Let's organize our lives around love and care Let's write each other letters and call it prayer Let's congregate in the place that isn't anywhere At the temple of broken dreams
“Bread and roses” are what the humans involved in care—the patient and the clinician—want from healthcare.
Over this summer both of us read Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, Orwell’s Roses,1 which she was inspired to write when she discovered that George Orwell had not only written the bleakest and most powerful portrayals of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century,2 but had also planted rose bushes, costing him sixpence each from Woolworths. This apparent contradiction between the bleak worldview and the hopeful act of gardening, reminded Solnit of the political slogan “Bread and Roses” which seems to have emerged in the US around 1910 and was used by women campaigning for votes for women and for workers’ rights. Describing the power of the slogan, Solnit wrote:
“Bread fed the body, roses fed something subtler: not just hearts, but imaginations, psyches, senses, identities. It was a pretty slogan but a fierce argument that more than survival and bodily well-being were needed and were being demanded as a right. It was equally an argument against the idea that everything that human beings need can be reduced to quantifiable, tangible goods and conditions. Roses in these declarations stood for the way that human beings are complex, desires are irreducible, that what sustains us is often subtle and elusive.”
“Bread and roses” are what the humans involved in care—the patient and the clinician—want from healthcare. Bread is sustenance and therefore life; roses are courage and hope, curiosity and joy, and all that makes a life worth living. Bread is biology; roses are biography. Bread is transactional and technocratic; roses are relational. Bread is science; roses are care, kindness and love.
“Bread and roses” can also describe how healthcare can support care. With apologies to those who bake their own loaves, the parallel here is with the industrial production of bread, so that bread represents the bureaucratic processes that make healthcare efficient and safe, preventing waste and error through standardisation, regulation, and training. Baking bread is like the technologies and innovations that make unhurried conversations and continuity of care possible and feasible, that reduce diagnostic errors, and detect and correct harms early and reliably. Attending to the bread makes sure healthcare retains the potential to attend to the object of care, to the bodies and minds, the fears and feelings of individual patients, and to create the conditions for careful and kind care to emerge.
Roses represent what makes life worth living, all that is good in human relationships, and the stories we use to make sense of our desperate situations and of what is possible with treatment. Roses are what gives us comfort in the face of failure, pain, decay, and death, that is, in the face of living. Attending to roses brings the subject of care into sharp relief so that the scars of injustice, racism, inequity, and violence can be made visible alongside the scars of disease. Roses, like careful and kind care,3 speak of hope—our work of planting and creating conditions of light, soil, and water makes it possible that a flower will appear in the future. Just like roses, care cannot be summoned or coaxed, but must emerge from the right conditions.
Responding to the crisis of care | The BMJ
How to respond to this crisis of care?
Here, Orwell himself holds the clue. The discovery that Orwell had planted those roses led Solnit to reassess his novel 1984. Within all the greyness and cruelty and oppression, there is this great truth:
“What mattered were individual relationships, and that a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself.”2
All the joy, all the roses of health, even in these dire times, exist within relationships, between patients and professionals, and between healthcare colleagues; and in the sure knowledge that all these helpless gestures have value in themselves.
It turns out that the subversive, almost revolutionary thing to do within contemporary healthcare is to build, quietly and unobtrusively, these crucial relationships. We now know that continuity of care, within a unique dyad of patient and doctor, delays disease and prolongs lives5 and thereby supplies bread, but it does so by simultaneously giving us the roses of joy, trust, curiosity, care, kindness, and solidarity. A life worth living tends to last longer.
In fact, care, like love, is abundant and self-sustaining, a potential of everyone. Trained and celebrated, caring is a demanding human capability that swells with the satisfaction of having opted to run towards the pain, that replenishes with the smile and the gratitude with which we evaluate our effectiveness, that regenerates when the care, and love, returns to care givers when they, invariably, must become care receivers. Care, like roses, gives meaning to living. We must cultivate care.
In fighting our way out of this healthcare crisis, in working for careful and kind care for all, we must follow the suffragettes and demand “bread and roses.”
Responding to the crisis of care | The BMJ
We gotta really try, Try so hard to get by, And where are we going to?
Don't wanna be free of hope
And I'm at the end of my rope
It's so tough just to be alive
When I feel like the living dead
I'm givin' it up so plain
I'm livin' my life in vain
And where am I going to?
I gotta really try
Try so hard to get by
And where am I going to?
Flip on your TV And try to make sense out of that If we were all in the movies Maybe we wouldn't be so bored We're givin' it up so plain We're livin' our lives in vain And where are we going to? We gotta really try Try so hard to get by And where are we going to?
Life in Vain by Daniel Johnston
I call it burning these days because that’s what it feels like: like there’s an idea inside me burning its way out. But when I was younger, I called it flying. What I really meant was controlled falling. Like there was a tornado going on and I would leap off something and ride right through the middle of it, all the way up, chasing words. Because that’s what it felt like for me, rolling on through the manic energy that comes with being bipolar.
A lot of folks equate the manic energy of being bipolar with the creative spark that drives artists to brilliance. They point to so many great artists in history who lived with mental illness and say, “There it is, that energy, that’s what made them great!”
Except for so many artists, mental illness didn’t make them great. It made them ill. And if they weren’t careful, it made them gone.
DISABILITY VISIBILITY: FIRST PERSON STORIES FROM THE 21ST CENTURY
Do you know why we have the sunflowers?
She talked about Vincent van Gogh, the artist who suffered during his life from mental illness, self-medicated, was treated by doctors, and struggled to succeed despite his obvious impossible talent due to his sickness. She talked about her knowledge of his life, thanks to her art history degree, and how he sold only one painting his entire life—not because he wasn’t recognized by his community as a genius but because he struggled to even be part of a community due to his illness.
And I thought of the flying and the hard days at the word mines. I thought about the days when I heard the tornado in my head and couldn’t make the words get to my fingers. I thought about the frustration, the depression, the difficulties talking to people about what it sounded like inside my skull some days when I could barely pay attention because of the rush of words and ideas.
Hannah Gadsby told people artists don’t have to suffer for their art, and I’ll forever thank her for having the guts to stand up and say that to the world. Because I used to believe it was true.
DISABILITY VISIBILITY: FIRST PERSON STORIES FROM THE 21ST CENTURY
Being bipolar is a constant system of checks and balances. These days I fight against needing my medication adjusted a lot, against depression and anxiety, mania and hypomania. I still end up flying some days, sometimes for days at a time, because as time goes on, the body changes and you have to adjust to new needs, new doses, new medication.
Coping mechanisms change, life situations go ways you never expected, mania and depression rear their ugly heads. But the day I went on medication was one of the greatest days of my life, because it was the day my creative spark stopped becoming an excuse to keep putting up with an illness that was killing me.
DISABILITY VISIBILITY: FIRST PERSON STORIES FROM THE 21ST CENTURY
📖 Our Story: Challenging the Norm and Changing the Narrative
Scrollytelling is the fusion of scrolling and storytelling: a way to dynamically tell long-form stories as the user scrolls.
Scrollytelling: How to Transform Your Long-Form Content | Elementor
Art, music, poetry, and prose from our community of neurodivergent and disabled people await.
Join us in challenging the norm and changing the narrative by reframing our states of being.
Let’s challenge the norm and change the narrative.
The neurodiversity movements needs its shoes off, and fists up.
We have protests to stage, driven by the fuel of our righteous anger. We have speeches to make, written from the soaring pleas of our individual and collective trauma, and our wildest dreams of joy and freedom and love. We have cultural narratives to rewrite because they really do hate us and they really will kill us, and if we’re going to rewrite the narratives, then there’s no reason to hold ourselves back from our most radical and defiant rewritings. We have autistic children who need us to support them as architects of their own liberation against the schools and clinicians and institutions and police and prosecutors who would crush and destroy them.
We’re going to need our anger and our public celebrations of stimming and our complicated, imperfect, messy selves for this long and hard road, because we need all of us, and all of our tactics and strategies, to keep a movement going and ultimately, to win.
Autistic Hoya — A blog by Lydia X. Z. Brown: The neurodiversity movements needs its shoes off, and fists up.
I, Victoria Lin Tanner, am just one of many people who discovered, after a lifetime of struggle, that I am autistic. This book is about my journey of self-discovery. It is also a scream into the cold, black void where no help is to be found for people like me. Autistic children become autistic adults, so why is there no support for us? I am here to shine a glaring spotlight on the ways that society has failed autistic adults. For many of the 5 million+ autistic Americans, and ~75 million worldwide, life would be made far more manageable and frankly, happier, if our struggles were supported in meaningful ways rather than through #autismawareness retweets and puzzle piece merchandise.
We are here, we are angry, and we are only going to get louder.
Autistic adults are not okay.
Autistic Adults Are Not Okay – Victoria Lin Tanner, Autistic Adults Not Okay, Autistic Visibility Project
Autistic Adults Are Not Okay – by Lin Tanner, Victoria
🌱 It is time to celebrate our interdependence. The parts we need to survive are scattered All amongst us.
We challenge the norm and change the narrative with our scrollytelling by first recognizing that “the parts we need to survive are scattered All amongst us.”
On this website, we curate the treasures of neurodivergent and disabled cultures.
We weave a colorful cloth of community relationships, voices, knowledge, and skills.
This website isn’t one voice. It is many. It is a chorus of interdependence.
This swatch of rainbow woven cloth evokes our biopsychosocial complexity, our diversity, and our interdependence. It evokes the adaptive interdependence of body, mind, and culture.
evoke = to make someone remember something or feel an emotion
biopsychosocial = biological + psychological + social = to understand a person’s medical condition it is not simply the biological factors to consider, but also the psychological and social factors
interdependence = our survival is bound up together, we are interconnected and what we do impacts others
What would it mean to weave a colorful, durable cloth of individuals’ and communities’ relationships, knowledge and skills?
We take the analogy of weaving cloth to highlight the properties and valuable variations of effective educational systems.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials
Envisioning humans and their contexts as mutually constitutive threads in a cloth, we ask, how can we most productively approach the interwoven micro- and macro-adaptations in the systems that make up the individual and context? How can we conceptualize and follow the humanistic threads and patterns that individuals and groups dynamically weave through educational environments and processes, in order to most strategically redesign educational systems to support the emergence of diverse human potentials and contributions? What would it mean to weave a colorful, durable cloth of individuals’ and communities’ relationships, knowledge and skills, designing educational systems that center equity and dignity, and attend to variability of experience? How could education systems be designed to enrich human capacities to invent and sustain vibrant and meaningful lives in a vibrant and healthy society?
PsyArXiv Preprints | Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials
In this sense, examining learning and its contexts is like examining the weaving of a cloth—the twists and knots of different threads are interwoven, and distinct patterns, textures and colors are discernable depending on how the observer zooms in or looks from afar. At one distance, threads can represent people in community, holding each other in place in the weave; further magnified, threads could be composed of the fibers of an individual’s skills and experiences, twisted together across the threads of others as they extend through time. The fibers, patterns, and weaves of various cloths will vary substantially according to available resources, needs and aesthetics, from thick wool blankets or rugs, to flowing silk scarves, to sturdy nets or straps. Weaving itself is dynamic: it generates out of disparate parts a unified set of patterns, stronger together as a whole. Cloth also needs repair due to its day-to-day use as well as to unpredictable accidents and tears. Inevitably, new threads and new patterns will take hold. Thinking of education as supporting the weaving of fibers and also as tending to the condition of the whole cloth underscores the shared features of healthy learning communities with well- designed systems and structures, as well as the substantial and valuable variation that will emerge within and across contexts.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials
Through their ideas and intentions as well as their actions, communities of individuals continually renew, together, the socio-cultural context in which they are living, including the beliefs, the norms, and the patterns of relationships that organize society’s social fabric—the cloth they are weaving.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials
The cloth can be strengthened and enriched, new patterns can be collaboratively generated, and holes and tears repaired.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials
Effective education does not simply produce a standardized, predetermined product. It is instead about weaving a colorful cloth that reflects community members’ rich skills and relationships, with generative patterns that integrate complex knowledge and ideas, and that can look different in different contexts.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Weaving a colorful cloth: Centering education on humans’ emergent developmental potentials
I am fighting for an interdependence that embraces need and tells the truth: no one does it on their own and the myth of independence is just that, a myth.
Abled culture teaches you to act as if you are independent, to buy into the myth of independence. Reject this. Embrace interdependence and know it is the only way we will be able to end this pandemic. Know that if we center disabled people, first and foremost those who are high risk, it will help everyone.
You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence
This work is about shifting how we understand access, moving away from the individualized and independence-framed notions of access put forth by the disability rights movement and, instead, working to view access as collective and interdependent.
With disability justice, we want to move away from the“myth of independence,” that everyone can and should be able to do everything on their own. I am not fighting for independence, as much of the disability rights movement rallies behind. I am fighting for an interdependence that embraces need and tells the truth: no one does it on their own and the myth of independence is just that, a myth.
Changing the Framework: Disability Justice | Leaving Evidence
It is from being disabled that I heave learned about the dangerous and privileged “myth of independence” and embraced the power of interdependence. The myth of independence being of course, that somehow we can and should be able to do everything on our own without any help from anyone. This requires such a high level of privilege and even then, it is still a myth. Whose oppression and exploitation must exist for your “independence?”
We believe and swallow ableist notions that people should be “independent,” that we would never want to have to have a nurse, or not be able to drive, or not be able to see, or hear. We believe that we should be able to do things on our own and push our selves (and the law) hard to ensure that we can. We believe ableist heteronormative ideas that families should function as independent little spheres. That I should just focus on MY family and make sure MY family is fed, clothed and provided for; that MY family inherits MY wealth; that families should not be dependent on the state or anyone else; that they should be “able-bodied,” essentially. We believe the ableist heteronormative racist classist myth that marriage, “independence” as sanctified through the state, is what we want because it allows us to be more “independent,” more “equal” to those who operate as if they are independent—That somehow, this makes us more “able.”
And to be clear, I do not desire independence, as much of the disability rights movement rallies behind. I am not fighting for independence. I desire community and movements that are collectively interdependent.
Interdependence (exerpts from several talks) | Leaving Evidence
Everyone is causally interconnected with, interdependent with, and fundamentally the same as all other humans.
…the eco-system arises from and responds to the multiple ways in which everyone is causally interconnected with, interdependent with, and fundamentally the same as all other humans, and literary representations of these various types of solidarity, their inherence in human nature, and their benefits to people who recognize and embrace them can help students incorporate these principles into their mental models of human nature and thus both recognize and enact them more productively in their personal, professional, and civic lives.
The most obviously systemic form of interconnectedness is existential: we all depend on other humans for our very existence and survival—that is, for the production and distribution of our food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention the complex technologies that we in the postindustrial world have come to rely on. We are dependent on the work of countless other individuals at every moment in our lives, and we simply could not exist without their direct and indirect contributions to our lives.
Literature, Social Wisdom, and Global Justice: Developing Systems Thinking
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Keep scrolling to witness our weaving, but first…
🌊 Bodymind Break
Before we continue, let’s take a bodymind break.
bodymind = a term used to challenge the idea the body and mind are experienced separately
The swells and textures of nature follow patterns that resonate with the human body through its ability to hear sound. Enjoy a sonic tribute to one of nature’s most wonderful experiences, the sound of the ocean’s waves. The swells are specially timed to encourage the body to breathe more slowly and more deeply. The sound spectrum is full and is matched to the powerful release of deep sound energy of the Earth’s beautiful shores.
Take a moment to breathe. Take a moment to affirm your bodymind.
Some ways to affirm your bodymind and support nervous system regulation:
- stretch
- flap
- fidget
- meditate
- stim dance
- body scan
- eat
- drink
- pee
In practical terms, supporting nervous system regulation means tending to and responding to the body’s needs first and foremost. This means prioritising physiological needs. Things like taking rest breaks, keeping warm, cooling down, regularly hydrating, moving when the body feels it needs to, and going to the toilet as soon as you need to.
Embodied Education: Creating Safe Space for Learning, Facilitating and Sharing
Press play for ocean waves.
We’re not minds riding around in bodies, we’re bodyminds.
Neurodiversity, simply put, is the diversity among human minds. For 15 years or so after the term was coined, it was common for people to speak of neurodiversity as ‘‘diversity among brains.’’ There still are plenty of people who talk about it that way. I think this is a mistake; it’’s an overly reductionist and essentialist definition that’s decades behind present-day understandings of how human bodyminds work.
Mind is an embodied phenomenon. The mind is encoded in the brain as ever-changing webs of neural connectivity. The brain is part of the body, interconnected with the rest of the body by a vast network of nerves. The activity of the mind and body creates changes in the brain; changes in the brain affect both mind and embodiment. Mind, brain, and embodiment are intricately entwined in a single complex system. We’re not minds riding around in bodies, we’re bodyminds.
A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn’t mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds.
Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker | Autism in Adulthood
So much of my perception of my autistic self is embodied.
As indicated by the title, the first essential term for this book is bodymind. Bodymind is a materialist feminist disability studies concept from Margaret Price that refers to the enmeshment of the mind and body, which are typically understood as interacting and connected, yet distinct entities due to the Cartesian dualism of Western philosophy (“The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain” 270). The term bodymind insists on the inextricability of mind and body and highlights how processes within our being impact one another in such a way that the notion of a physical versus mental process is difficult, if not impossible to clearly discern in most cases (269). Price argues that bodymind cannot be simply a rhetorical stand-in for the phrase “mind and body”; rather, it must do theoretical work as a disability studies term. Bodymind is an essential concept in chapter 3 in my discussion of hyperempathy, a nonrealist disability that is both mental and physical in origin and manifestation. Bodymind generally, however, is an important and theoretically useful term to use in analyzing speculative fiction as the nonrealist possibilities of human and nonhuman subjects, such as the werewolves discussed in chapter 4, often highlight the imbrication of mind and body, sometimes in extreme or explicitly apparent ways that do not exist in our reality.
In addition to the utility of the term bodymind in discussions of speculative fiction, I also use this term because of its theoretical utility in discussions of race and (dis)ability. For example, bodymind is particularly useful in discussing the toll racism takes on people of color. As more research reveals the ways experiences and histories of oppression impact us mentally, physically, and even on a cellular level, the term bodymind can help highlight the relationship of nonphysical experiences of oppression—psychic stress—and overall well-being. While this research is emergent, people of color and women have long challenged their association with pure embodiment and the degradation of the body as unable to produce knowledge through a rejection of the mind/body divide. Bodymind provides, therefore, a politically and theoretically useful term in discussing (dis)ability in black women’s speculative fiction and more.
Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction – Dr. Sami Schalk
We urgently need a society that’s better at letting people get the rest they need.
Nothing in this culture wants us to have rest. Wants us to have ease. Wants us to have care. The softness was stolen. Our dreamspace has been stolen. Our space to just be has been stolen.
Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry.
As you listen to ocean waves, imagine you are at the coast watching this friendly solarpunk behemoth.
Artist Statement
When the ancient ones awaken to help out humanity with their climate problem.
This was a piece I’ve been wanting to do for ages and @stimpunks helped me make this a reality! So thank you so much for this commission! All of my neurospicy friends should definitely check out Stimpunks and give them a follow!
I just wanted an excuse to blend Solarpunk with fantasy art really.
The idea is that an environmental research facility was unwittingly built upon the back of a sleeping earth colossus due to the unique flora and fauna of the area, only for the colossus to suddenly awaken. The behemoth made an agreement with the scientists that they may stay on its back, but only on the condition that they treat the isolated ecosystem with respect and that their research will help heal nature and bring about a world where humans and nature live in harmony again.
The research facility itself is constructed from entirely sustainable materials and is a blend of iron-age and modern architecture. The scientists must stick to strict limestone paths so not to erode any of the earthy areas. Some locations cannot be accessed by foot and are therefore drone-only. The entire facility is powered by those airborne turbines (I probably added more than there needed to be but they look pretty haha).
Here’s some concept art for the colossus. I made him a lot less grumpy in the final piece. He has six legs on account of him being extremely front-heavy and he has little tiptoeing ungulate feet. I also worked a lot of fossil motifs into his design, plus I imagine the wooden structures that make his antlers are so ancient that they have started to petrify. I want this creature to feel truly ancient. His face is also inspired by “the green man” a little bit.
Kaya’s Kosmos on Tumblr: Solarpunk Colossus.
Ultimately Solarpunk envisions a world that might be slower, but more intentional. One that ties humanity closely to the natural world.
A future with a human face and dirt behind its ears.
This is Solarpunk. Finding the appropriate technologies to build aesthetically stimulating and liveable dwellings that tie us tightly with the landscape.
How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (ft. @Andrewism) – YouTube
Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and wild, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid. Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world — but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not warnings. Solutions to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share. At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle.
SOLARPUNK : A REFERENCE GUIDE. The below was compiled by… | by Jay Springett | Solarpunks | Medium
But what if we imagined something different? What if we imagined worlds where nature, humanity, and technology not only coexist, but thrive together. Worlds that are rich with the greens and blues of abundance. Utopias? Maybe, but certainly utopias worth striving for.
This is what Solarpunk is all about. A burgeoning genre of art and a movement that casts off the dystopian, technology-heavy futurism of cyberpunk and instead tries to build a world wherein people not only live well, but also live well with the natural world.
Solarpunk is an exercise in imagination, but it is also a call to action. There are very real Solarpunk solutions that already exist or are currently feasible that can start to bring about a Solarpunk future today. And today, we’ll look at the viability of some of these solutions and answer the question: how can we build a Solarpunk world right now?
Solarpunk is high and low tech: Before we dive into the promising tools that might aid our quest for a Solarpunk world, we first need to understand the role of technology in the Solarpunk community. As we will soon see, technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (ft. @Andrewism) – YouTube
For those out of the loop, solarpunk is on a bit of a spectrum, from pure aesthetic hopeful imagining to actually building our collective futures here and now.
Solarpunk aims to look beyond the limitations of capitalism and beyond the rift between humanity and nature. Most importantly, it’s a project and vision of liberation that we co-create for our unique local conditions, ecosystems, and needs, as we work towards a better society.
Solarpunk isn’t something to be imposed from above, through capitalist ventures or state projects. It’s grassroots, and must incorporate the voices, experiences, and inputs of a wide range of people.
How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future (ft. @OurChangingClimate) – YouTube
And in the late 2000s, the concept of “solarpunk” emerged. YouTube channel Our Changing Climate with Andrewism published an overview of Solarpunk: “Ultimately Solarpunk envisions a world that might be slower, but more intentional. One that ties humanity closely to the natural world.” As Andrewism put in the replies: “A future with a human face and dirt behind its ears.”
But if solarpunk is the future with humanity put back in, achieving it means taking control of that future from economic, social, & political forces that seem to be on autopilot to self-destruction, utterly divorced from human desires & human intervention. One path we’ve imagined already, and its grimy survivalist individualism was the defining feature of Reagan-era science fiction classics. However, in its radical reimagination of economic & social structures, solarpunk resists the nihilism & doomerism of the grim dehumanized technological dystopias that dominate the worlds of Blade Runner, Robocop, & William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
Do we have the willingness to challenge the predominant social, economic, & political structures & systems that need to be challenged? To change the very nature of humanity’s relationship to the planet? What role does education play in all of this?
Fighting Back Against the Future | Human Restoration Project | Nick Covington Chris McNutt
Solarpunk is a lot of things. Its definitions are still growing, but at its heart, is always about one thing: a vision of a possible future where humanity nature and technology live in harmony beyond the human centric.
Solarpunk worlds are a green, sustainable, and socially just for everyone.
How Solarpunk Fiction Envisions a Better Tomorrow | Video Essay – YouTube
Solarpunk gives us the permission to imagine differently.
Solarpunk gives us the permission to imagine differently; to resist Giroux’s “dead zone of imagination.”
Imagining a better future isn’t naivety, it’s essential for a thriving world
We must preserve in the face of everything a positive outlook toward organizing surviving, and building anew or risk becoming stagnant.
Individual actions snowball and propagate through systems, and each act of service, each pushback, each classroom decision can fundamentally build a better future.
It’s up to us to make that tomorrow a reality.
Fighting Back Against the Future: Imagining a Solarpunk Education – YouTube
I would call our work to change the world “science fictional behavior”—being concerned with the way our actions and beliefs now, today, will shape the future, tomorrow, the next generations.
We are excited by what we can create, we believe it is possible to create the next world.
We believe.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
🐇🕳️🌈 Down the Rabbit Hole: We’ve Got Space for You
We design for and encourage skimming, so skim-scroll on down and see what grabs your attention.
How We Try to Make This Website More ADHD-Friendly
In this video, Jessica discusses how she made her book more ADHD friendly.
We attempt all of these things on our website at stimpunks.org.
- Lots of whitespace.
- Every page/screen has something breaking up the text. Break up text with pull quotes, blocks, bullets, bolding, backgrounds, images.
- Add attention getters like selective bolding and pull quotes.
- Write in conversational style.
- Organize so you don’t have to read it.
- Flip open right to your struggle. Allow people to pick up and go right to what they need.
- Format is the same for every chapter.
- Make it so people can just read the headers.
- Make it engaging and visual.
- Add in jokes and feelings.
- Put everything in one book so folks have one place to go.
What would you do to make our scrollytelling style on stimpunks.org more ADHD-friendly?
A page of neat and tidy typed text in long paragraphs is the least memorable format known.
We attempt some techniques from “Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History” on stimpunks.org.
A page of neat and tidy typed text in long paragraphs is the least memorable format known. You need to reduce it into small segments, each made memorable by flourishes and fancy layouts. Add colour and doodles. Highlight. Enclose with clouds. Write the whole portion backwards. Do anything to make each logical entity, each verse, distinct.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
The efficacy of short sentences on a memorable page resonates with my experience as a teacher. I have found that students who read an entire paragraph of information quickly will often claim they didn’t understand it, but if they read it phrase by phrase, stopping at each comma or full stop to ensure they understand, the entire paragraph becomes meaningful. With short sentences, you are forced to engage with each element of the information and not try to grasp the whole in a single befuddling quest.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
I’ll explain how these methods correlate with the most recent discoveries in neuroscience, which show that associating memory with place is hardwired into our brains. This common factor is why cultures all over the world have developed similar methods: they are working with the same brain structure. The neuroscience explains how we benefit from repetition and music, and in particular the value of memory palaces.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
One of the most important lessons I have learned from indigenous cultures is the value of strong characters in stories. I cannot emphasise enough how useful this is.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Indigenous cultures around the world don’t just use the vast landscape as a memory palace; they use a wonderfully integrated system of objects—portable memory devices—that are often simply referred to as ‘art’ and seen to have little practical purpose.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
many objects interpreted simply as artworks are mnemonic landscapes in miniature.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
The wilder, the more colourful and active, the more grotesque, vulgar or erotic the images and stories you create are, the more memorable they will be. That is the secret to making knowledge memorable.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
A memory palace is a structure, grounded in the landscape, offering a firm base on which to build a tower of knowledge to play with, analyse and think about—a way to ponder the big picture.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
As in classical times, memory training involved associating information with emotionally striking images in a set of ordered physical locations.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
But most important of all, the pages of the text had to stir the emotions to make the written word unforgettable.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
The elaborately decorated lists of numbers were written between illustrations of columns with arches above, reflecting the ancient memory advice to use inter-columnar spaces as locations for memory images. The vertical spaces between the columns were then divided by horizontal lines into small rectangular spaces, each holding no more than five items, the maximum number suggested for retaining in memory for a single location.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Laying out the narrative in a grid of images makes it more memorable. Your brain will remember where a given rectangle in the grid lies in the space and hence recall the information.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Many of the stories are painted in grids, some of the most famous examples being three cells by four cells, as in Plate 23. The images are not only unique but positioned in a unique location on the page.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Hugh recommended using grids of cells to memorise large swathes of text. For example, for the 150 psalms, he recommended that the beginning phrase of the first verse be placed in a cell. The cells were placed in a line of 150 locations. For each psalm, he then imagined another set of numbered cells, one for each verse.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Whenever you need to learn an abstract theme, give it a character.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
In the pious Middle Ages, violent, lewd and fanciful images were deemed highly inappropriate. I am delighted to report that Albertus justified their use because, ironically, they were so effective for memorising moral philosophies.
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
In her seminal work, The Art of Memory, Frances Yates wrote: ‘If Simonides was the inventor of the art of memory and “Tullius” its teacher, Thomas Aquinas became something like its patron saint.’1
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
Our Storytelling Conventions
We love hyperlinks and use them extensively. We consider them a kindness to the reader and a potent weapon in the fight against disinformation. Many of our links lead to our expansive glossary.
We love Stimpunks, their Glossary is a rich source of information presented through an affirming lens. Be more Punk! 🤘🏻✊🏾 https://stimpunks.org/glossary-list/#h-all-glossary-entries
Pebble Autism on X
We use block quotations (blockquote) heavily. We quote our favorite passages and sources with hyperlinks signposting back to the original work.
We also heavily use “accordions”. Accordions contain more in depth information on a topic that you can reveal at your own pace.
We often break paragraphs of text down into bulleted lists that present one idea per line in plain language.
To listen to our web pages:
- Many, but not all, pages on our website provide AI-generated audio of the text.
- Press play near the top of each page.
- Or click/tap the floating headphones icon on the bottom right of the screen.
- We respect ear-reading.
We provide content hierarchy, visual hierarchy, and tables of contents.
We are iterating toward “digital stories” and “Web-Based Conceptual Portmanteau”.
Consume this content to the depth and breadth of your preference in whatever way and order works for you.
This website is a living document that you can contribute to under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. Send us your suggestions and favorite quotes and resources.
We provide “Main Takeaways” on many pages. Main takeaways are presented with one idea per line in a bulleted list format. If you don’t have time or energy to read an entire page, reading just the main takeaways will give you what you most need to know.
Readers on the web scan for information, rather than reading everything line-by-line. Chunking your content into smaller sections, called out by larger headings, helps them find the information they’re searching for.
When I’m trying to find something quickly, there’s nothing more intimidating than jumping onto a site with a giant wall of unbroken content.
Show, Don’t Tell | CSS-Tricks – CSS-Tricks
Where possible, break down paragraphs into lists. Lists make scanning easier!
Show, Don’t Tell | CSS-Tricks – CSS-Tricks
bold the most important part of a sentence to make sure that readers scanning through your content catch their eyes on what’s most important.
Show, Don’t Tell | CSS-Tricks – CSS-Tricks
Show, then tell. Start with concrete examples & pictures, then lay down the abstract definitions.
Nutshell: make expandable, embeddable explanations
Our Rules for Scrollytelling
- Accordions expand/infodump on a topic without interrupting the main flow.
- Accordions labelled “What is…” provide definitions, context, and further reading.
- Accordions labelled “In other words…” explain things in different ways, including easy read, one idea per line, and plain language summaries.
- One line inline definitions are offered.
- Explanatory items are grouped into “What does this mean?” blocks.
- Related items are grouped together on a colored background with a group title. This makes it easier to tell what’s in a group and skim past it.
- Pick colors for groups based on colors in included media, if any.
- Pick colors for groups of accordions based on themes like rainbow.
- Lots of whitespace.
- Every page/screen has something breaking up the text.
- Selective bolding of key sentences facilitates skimming.
- A table of contents is provided near the top of each page.
- Headings are used approximately every 5 screens (on a laptop) or less.
- 20 headings max.
- Put a “coming up” table of contents after 10 headings.
- Consider putting a “Bodymind Break” section after 10 headings.
- Spacers are used as pause points, fermata.
- Spacers are used before headings to accentuate the break.
- Long scrollytelling stories signpost to what’s ahead.
- Break up text with pull quotes, blocks, bullets, bolding, backgrounds, images.
- Use lists to present one idea per line.
- Make it so people can just read the headers, table of contents and get the gist of the page/section.
- Make it engaging and visual.
- Write in a conversational style.
- Add in jokes and feelings.
There’s more about our scrollytelling conventions in our explainer at “📚🌈♿️ An Encyclopedia of Disability and Difference”
Content on our website is structured in a multimedia, multi-modality, scrollytelling style where the main concepts are presented at the top of the page in plainer language, with more academic language and further detail provided as you scroll down. Read to the depth you’re comfortable with. If you don’t have time to rabbit hole an entire page or section, read what you can knowing that you got the main ideas up front.
“Down the rabbit hole” = getting deep into something or ending up somewhere strange
Consume this content to the depth and breadth of your preference in whatever way and order works for you.
In other words…
The content on our website is designed to be engaging and accessible to a wide range of readers. We have adopted a multimedia, multi-modality, scrollytelling style, which means that information is presented in a visually appealing and interactive manner.
When you visit our website, you will notice that the main concepts are presented at the top of the page using simpler language. This allows you to quickly grasp the key ideas without getting overwhelmed by technical jargon. As you scroll down, you will find more detailed explanations and academic language for those who want to delve deeper into the topic.
We understand that everyone has different preferences when it comes to consuming content. That’s why we encourage you to read at your own pace and to the depth that you feel comfortable with. If you don’t have the time to explore an entire page or section, you can still gain a good understanding by focusing on the main ideas presented at the beginning.
We want you to have a flexible and customizable experience on our website. Feel free to consume the content in any way and order that works best for you. Whether you prefer to skim through the main points or dive into the nitty-gritty details, our goal is to provide you with valuable information in a format that suits your needs.
AI Disclosure: The summary above was created with the help of Elephas AI Assistant.
Accordions labelled “In other words…” explain things in different ways, including easy read, one idea per line, and plain language summaries.
Let’s scroll.
Let’s infodump. Let’s share knowledge and information, together.
It is also quite acceptable in autistic culture to “infodump” on a topic whenever it happens to come up. To autists, the sharing of knowledge and information is always welcome.
It is also quite acceptable in autistic culture to “infodump” on a topic whenever it happens to come up. To autists (an insider short-hand for autistic people), the sharing of knowledge and information is always welcome.
7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture » NeuroClastic
But one thing is particularly important to my purposes here: our hyperfixations adore company, and if an autistic person is given the opportunity to share their passion for the subject with friends, relatives or complete strangers, then you can expect high levels of enthusiasm, enormous amounts of data and information to be delivered, and impressive levels of knowledge. In short, if you want to be taught something, you can do a lot worse than be taught about it by an autistic person for whom it is one of their special interests. I have been taught about various subjects by openly autistic people and the experience has invariably been truly fantastic, and my understanding of the topic afterwards deep and thorough.
Learning From Autistic Teachers (pp. 30-31)
INFO DUMPING
- Talking alot about a topic in great detail
- Telling someone about a special interest
- A way of building a connection with someone
- Sharing extensive knowledge about a topic
- A way to initiate an interaction
- Longer conversational turns
- Overlapping speech during the conversation
- Showing someone how much you know about a subject
- Sharing excitement about a topic
It’s all about perception. If we re-frame these ‘deficits’ and view them through a neurodiversity lens, we can acknowledge that autistic communication is just a different way of communicating.
Communication Features | AutisticSLT
We use accordions to infodump on a topic without interrupting the main flow.
Down the rabbit hole: If it exists, you can reasonably assume there will be an autistic person to whom that thing is the subject of intense obsession and time spent.
The reality is that if it exists, you can reasonably assume there will be an autistic person to whom that thing is the subject of intense obsession and time spent, from blankets to drain covers (both of these are special interests of people in my acquaintance) and pretty much anything in between. When engaging in a special interest, autistic people are typically calmer, more relaxed, happier and more focused than they would otherwise be – for many, it is a form of release or even self-medication: a well-timed foray into a special interest can stave off meltdown and be a generally extremely positive force in an autistic person’s life.
Learning From Autistic Teachers (pp. 30-31)
Learning From Autistic Teachers (pp. 30-31)
Many people with autism are stressed individuals who find the world a confusing place (Vermeulen, 2013). So how does someone with autism achieve a sense of flow? McDonnell & Milton (2014) have argued that many repetitive activities may achieve a flow state. One obvious area where flow can be achieved is when engaging in special interests. Special interests allow people to become absorbed in an area that gives them specialist knowledge and a sense of achievement. In addition, certain repetitive tasks can help people achieve a flow like state of mind. These tasks can become absorbing and are an important part of people’s lives. The next time you see an individual with autism engaging in a repetitive task (like stacking Lego or playing a computer game), remember that these are not in themselves negative activities, they may well be reducing stress.
If you want to improve your supports to people with autism from a stress perspective, a useful tool is to identify flow states for that person and try to develop a flow plan. Remember, the next time you see a person repeating seemingly meaningless behaviours, do not assume that this is always unpleasant for them – it might be a flow state, and beneficial for reducing stress.
What is ‘flow’?
“Down the rabbit hole” is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange.
Down the rabbit hole – Wikipedia
Learning how to learn on his own proved one of the most important lessons of his life.
What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
It feels like a rabbit warren of underground tunnels and caves where people meet, mainly through online social media platforms. The continuous physical growth of these spaces where people are connecting is slowly creating ripples and heading into real family spaces and showing a genuine need for change in our education system as more and more children are showing how the current frameworks are just not meeting needs and resulting in school attendance difficulties and mental health concerns.
Caverns, Pleats and Folds. The potential to neuroqueer is inside… | by MoreRealms | Medium
The Autistic Rhizome = an interconnected network of knowledge exchange and mutual aid and support
Rhizome: as conceptualised in the work of Deleuze and Guatarri. A network with no single point of origin. No part of the network depends upon the existence of another. I have introduced the idea of this in the context of community here.
Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy
On discord, there is a growing network of communities. I have lovingly dubbed this collective The Autistic Rhizome. They are an interconnected network of knowledge exchange, and mutual aid and support that have displaced the hierarchical nature of advocate/follower relationships.
We are equal in these spaces.
This doesn’t mean that all knowledge shared is useful in advancing the neurodiversity movement. Like any knowledge, some is good, some is bad, most is somewhere in the middle.
This growing network consists of communities that do not depend on each other to exist, but are still enriched by their interconnection. There is no starting or end point. There is no advancing through communities based on levels of knowledge. They just simply exist, and people come and go as they please.
Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy
In order to explore the nature of our ever growing and developing Autistic culture, we need to be looking to the Autistic rhizome, detached from a non-existent central point, exploring new theory, and building on what exists. We need to surprise the world with each new thought, not repackage the same thought over and over.
Autistic Culture and the Advent of Decentralised Communities – Stimpunks Foundation
Deleuze and Guattari described this kind of thinking as ‘Rhyzomatic.’
A rhyzome isn’t like a tree, it doesn’t have subordinate parts emerging from a core trunk. A rhizome is a root system of pure connections.
How the things connect is how they are defined. By the same logic, how they are disconnected is how they are defined.
Deleuze differed from the poststructuralists like Derrida and Foucault in that he was a Monist. All of it is connected, all of it is one, and the connections and lack of connections between the things, are what define them as things. This is an Ontology of Difference.
Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube
A punk bass line. With all the space for ingenuity and contributions.
Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube
There is a deep yearning for people to feel understood, for their strengths to be celebrated and for their difficulties to be acknowledged. There seems to be a growing number of neurodivergent people seeking support and a growing number of neurodiversity-affirming, neurodivergent-led charities, organisations, and groups emerging to help people who have previously been marginalised and left feeling alone.
Many of the new organisations, groups and online spaces that are evolving are proving to be a wonderful coming together of different minds, a collective response to the long-standing unmet needs of neurodivergent people. They are an example of the internal experiences of neurodivergent people being acknowledged and represented in the community with shared experiences, empathy and understanding. This coming together and uniting through shared experiences and theories such as monotropism could be seen as being like a collective flow state; a combined energy of mutual understanding created by accepting and validating each other’s similarities and also differences.
Monotropism & Collective Flow. Exploring the philosophy of Deleuze &… | by MoreRealms | Oct, 2023 | Medium
Our collective flow from within the neurodivergent community is rhizomatically evolving and starting to branch outside the autistic community. Interest is growing that was not here even six months ago; webinars and training sessions are popping up over the internet, and new writing is being shared all the time.
I believe we need to embrace this flow and channel it into productive research and enable the inner experiences of neurodivergent people to drive the research so it is more meaningful for everyone. Neurodiversity is where potential and possibilities lie. Everyone has an integral and equally important role in creating and contributing to our community flow state and in the possibilities that may bring.
Monotropism & Collective Flow. Exploring the philosophy of Deleuze &… | by MoreRealms | Oct, 2023 | Medium
Here’s what is coming up on our scrollytelling journey.
Coming Up
- 🖼️ Our Ways of Being
- ⛺️ We Are a NeurodiVenture
- ⚖️ Our Creed
- 🎸 Our Rules of Punk
- 🔈 Testimonials
- 📢 Announcements
- 🎪 Upcoming Events
- 🎨 Featured Artist: Adriel Jeremiah Wool
- Coming Up: 📚🌈♿️ An Encyclopedia of Disability and Difference
Some of the things you’ll encounter on your journey…
- cat massages
- sick, dope, fire art
- lots of music
- sassy dances
- wolpertingers
- bunnybadgers
- bunny buns
- rainbow dragons
- Zelda maps
- flowerpunks
- punkflowers
- fractals
- hamster + lion = hamlion, rawr squeak
- a rainbow shrimp visualizer
- punk attitude
- the first rule of punk
- punky reggae parties
- screams into the void
- celebrations of interdependence
- the entwined nature of queer and neurodivergent people
- the entwined nature of queer and neurodivergent liberation
- words that have the power to change attitudes
- political and cultural connection with the neurodiversity and disability rights movements
🖼️ Our Ways of Being
Reframing is essential to all our pillars. Reframe yourself and others. This is hard and important work necessary to all other work. Challenge the norm, and change the narrative.
What is “framing”?
The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
You can’t see or hear frames. They are part of what we cognitive scientists call the “cognitive unconscious”—structures in our brains that we cannot consciously access, but know by their consequences. What we call “common sense” is made up of unconscious, automatic, effortless inferences that follow from our unconscious frames.
The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
We also know frames through language. All words are defined relative to conceptual frames. When you hear a word, its frame is activated in your brain.
Yes, in your brain. As the title of this book shows, even when you negate a frame, you activate the frame. If I tell you, “Don’t think of an elephant!,” you’ll think of an elephant.
Though I found this out first in the study of cognitive linguistics, it has begun to be confirmed by neuroscience. When a macaque monkey grasps an object, a certain group of neurons in the monkey’s ventral premotor cortex (which choreographs actions, but does not directly move the body) are activated. When the monkey is trained not to grasp the object, most of those neurons are inhibited (they turn off), but a portion of the same neurons used in grasping still turn on. That is, to actively not grasp requires thinking of what grasping would be.
Not only does negating a frame activate that frame, but the more it is activated, the stronger it gets. The moral for political discourse is clear: When you argue against someone on the other side using their language and their frames, you are activating their frames, strengthening their frames in those who hear you, and undermining your own views. For progressives, this means avoiding the use of conservative language and the frames that the language activates. It means that you should say what you believe using your language, not theirs.
The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
What does that mean?
In other words…
One Idea Per Line
- We shift away from the medical model and pathology paradigm.
- We embrace the biopsychosocial model and Neurodiversity paradigm.
- We move away from focusing solely on deficits.
- We adopt a more holistic approach that considers social structures and systems.
- We prioritize respectful connections.
One Paragraph Summary
Four Paragraph Summary
Furthermore, we adopt the Neurodiversity paradigm, which celebrates and values the diverse ways in which individuals’ brains function. Rather than pathologizing differences, we acknowledge and respect the unique strengths and perspectives that neurodivergent individuals bring to society.
As we reframe our thinking, we also transition from a deficit ideology to a structural ideology. Rather than solely blaming individuals for their challenges, we recognize the impact of societal structures and systems that may hinder their full participation and inclusion. By addressing these structural barriers, we aim to create a more equitable and supportive environment for all individuals, regardless of their neurodivergence.
In embracing this new framework, we strive to foster understanding, acceptance, and empowerment for individuals across the neurodiversity spectrum. By shifting our perspective and adopting these inclusive paradigms, we can create a more compassionate and inclusive society for everyone.
AI Disclosure: The summaries above were created with the help of Elephas AI Assistant.
Accordions labelled “In other words…” explain things in different ways, including easy read, one idea per line, and plain language summaries.
What is the “pathology paradigm”?
The pathology paradigm ultimately boils down to just two fundamental assumptions:
THROW AWAY THE MASTER’S TOOLS: LIBERATING OURSELVES FROM THE PATHOLOGY PARADIGM • NEUROQUEER
- There is one “right,” “normal,” or “healthy” way for human brains and human minds to be configured and to function (or one relatively narrow “normal” range into which the configuration and functioning of human brains and minds ought to fall).
- If your neurological configuration and functioning (and, as a result, your ways of thinking and behaving) diverge substantially from the dominant standard of “normal,” then there is Something Wrong With You.
What is the “neurodiversity paradigm”?
The neurodiversity paradigm is a specific perspective on neurodiversity – a perspective or approach that boils down to these fundamental principles:
1.) Neurodiversity is a natural and valuable form of human diversity.
2.) The idea that there is one “normal” or “healthy” type of brain or mind, or one “right” style of neurocognitive functioning, is a culturally constructed fiction, no more valid (and no more conducive to a healthy society or to the overall well-being of humanity) than the idea that there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture.
What It Doesn’t Mean:
Example of Correct Usage:
“Those who have embraced the neurodiversity paradigm, and who truly understand it, do not use pathologizing terms like ‘disorder’ to describe neurocognitive variants like autism.”
NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS • NEUROQUEER
What is “respectful connection”?
Instead of intensive speech therapy – we use a wonderful mash-up of communication including AAC, pictures scribbled on notepads, songs, scripts, and lots of patience and time.
Instead of sticker charts and time outs, or behavior therapy – we give hugs, we listen, solve problems together, and understand and respect that neurodivergent children need time to develop some skills
Instead of physical therapy – we climb rocks and trees, take risks with our bodies, are carried all day if we are tired, don’t wear shoes, paint and draw, play with lego and stickers, and eat with our fingers.
Instead of being told to shush, or be still- we stim, and mummies are joyful when they watch us move in beautiful ways.
Respectfully Connected | #HowWeDo Respectful Parenting and Support
A parent’s advice to a teacher of autistic kids
- Be patient. Autistic children are just as sensitive to frustration and disappointment in those around them as non-autistic children, and just like other children, if that frustration and disappointment is coming from caregivers, it’s soul-crushing.
- Presume competence. Begin any new learning adventure from a point of aspiration rather than deficit. Children know when you don’t believe in them and it affects their progress. Instead, assume they’re capable; they’ll usually surprise you. If you’re concerned, start small and build toward a goal.
- Meet them at their level. Try to adapt to the issues they’re struggling with, as well as their strengths and special interests. When possible, avoid a one-size-fits all approach to curriculum and activities.
- Treat challenges as opportunities. Each issue – whether it’s related to impulse control, a learning challenge, or a problem behavior – represents an opportunity for growth and accomplishment. Moreover, when you overcome one issue, you’re building infrastructure to overcome others.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate. For many parents, school can be a black box. Send home quick notes about the day’s events. Ask to hear what’s happening at home. Establish communication with people outside the classroom, including at-home therapists, grandparents, babysitters, etc. Encourage parents to come in to observe the classroom. In short, create a continuous feedback loop so all members of the caregiver team are sharing ideas and insights, and reinforcing tactics and strategies.
- Seek inclusion. This one’s a two-way street: not only do autistic children benefit from exposure to their non-autistic peers, those peers will get an invaluable life lesson in acceptance and neurodiversity. The point is to expose our kids to the world, and to expose the world to our kids.
- Embrace the obsession. Look for ways to turn an otherwise obsessive interest into a bridge mechanism, a way to connect with your students. Rather than constantly trying to redirect, find ways to incorporate and generalize interests into classroom activities and lessons.
- Create a calm oasis. Anxiety, sensory overload and focus issues affect many kids (and adults!), but are particularly pronounced in autistic children. By looking for ways to reduce noise, visual clutter and other distracting stimuli, your kids will be less anxious and better able to focus.
- Let them stim! Some parents want help extinguishing their child’s self-stimulatory behaviors, whether it’s hand-flapping, toe-walking, or any number of other “stimmy” things autistic kids do. Most of this concern comes from a fear of social stigma. Self-stimulatory behaviors, however, are soothing, relaxing, and even joy-inducing. They help kids cope during times of stress or uncertainty. You can help your kids by encouraging parents to understand what these behaviors are and how they help.
- Encourage play and creativity. Autistic children benefit from imaginative play and creative exercises just like their non-autistic peers, misconceptions aside. I shudder when I think about the schools who focus only on deficits and trying to “fix” our kids without letting them have the fun they so richly deserve. Imaginative play is a social skill, and the kids love it.
I just want to do what is best for my child. Can this notion of Neurodiversity help me do that?
Yes, absolutely! The notion of Neurodiversity can allow you to embrace your child for who they are, and it can empower you to look for respectful solutions to everyday problems. It can also help you to raise your child to feel empowered and content in their own skin.
Do you think I am ableist? I thought I was helping my child…
That is hard for me to hear. I didn’t think I was ableist and it hurts to be told I am.
That’s fair enough. However, if you want to do what is best for your child you will need to move past that in order to begin to shed this ableism from your everyday reactions and choices.
How does it feel to be autistic?
That is really complex and difficult to answer. I cannot explain that in as much depth as would give you a good knowledge of it, however there are so many autistic writers you can look to for guidance on that. If you are asking me to to describe how I experience life, as compared to how you experience life, this is a huge question.
Is there a quick way to understand all this?
Respectfully Connected | Neurodiversity Paradigm Parenting FAQs
1. Learn from autistic people
2. Tell your child they are autistic
3. Say NO to all things stressful & harmful
4. Slow down your life
5. Support & accommodate sensory needs
6. Value your child’s interests
7. Respect stimming
8. Honour & support all communication
9. Minimise therapy, increase accommodations & supports
10. Explore your own neurocognitive differences
Respectfully Connected | 10 ‘Autism Interventions’ for Families Embracing the Neurodiversity Paradigm
Meeting our children where they are doesn’t mean giving up on them. It means seeing them as a whole person, broadening their access to communication, helping them figuring out their unique learning styles, helping them figuring out their sensory profile, and putting accommodations in place. When we work with our children instead of against them, instead of trying to fix them, we end up with happier children. And that is a goal worth striving for.
Meghan Ashburn, I Will Die On This Hill
Applying ABA in therapeutic practice is entirely unacceptable to us. Therapist Neurodiversity Collective does things differently:
- Zero ABA, including positive reinforcement
- Zero desensitization, tolerance, or extinction targets or approaches
- Zero neuronormative goals (masking of sensory systems, monotropic interests systems, anxiety)
- Zero training neurotypical social skills
We take the research framework from developmental and relationship-based therapy models, use our knowledge of client and caregiver perspectives (no goals for masking, eye contact, whole body listening, appearing neurotypical, etc.), and apply our clinical background to implement therapy practices which are respectful, culturally competent, trauma-sensitive and empathetic.
Non-ABA Evidence Based Practice | Therapist Neurodiversity Collective
We presume competence.
We believe that AAC has no prerequisites.
We respect sensory differences.
We respect body autonomy.
Most importantly, we continually learn from our neurodivergent mentors as to what therapy approaches and methodologies are respectful and uphold human rights and self-determination.
Non-ABA Evidence Based Practice | Therapist Neurodiversity Collective
What is the “biopsychosocial model”?
A reductive, medical paradigm of research is incongruent with the legal status of neurominorities as protected conditions in most developed countries, to which organizations must adjust.
The aim of occupational accommodations for neurominorities is to access the strengths of the spiky profile and palliate the struggles.
Neurodiversity at work: a biopsychosocial model and the impact on working adults | British Medical Bulletin | Oxford Academic
Bio (physiological pathology)
Psycho (thoughts emotions and behaviours such as psychological distress, fear/avoidance beliefs, current coping methods and attribution)
Biopsychosocial Model – Physiopedia
Autistic People Recognize Challenges Associated with Autism
Frontiers | Whose Expertise Is It? Evidence for Autistic Adults as Critical Autism Experts
What is “deficit ideology”?
Unlearning Deficit Ideology and the Scornful Gaze: Thoughts on Authenticating the Class Discourse in Education
Unlearning Deficit Ideology and the Scornful Gaze: Thoughts on Authenticating the Class Discourse in Education
Equity is not compatible with deficit ideology because the function of deficit ideology is to obscure the actual causes of disparities.
Paul Gorski
What is “structural ideology”?
This is equity literacy: having the knowledge that a commitment to equity requires us to ask these questions and then having the will to ask them. There is no path to equity literacy that does not include the adoption of a structural ideology because there is no way to cultivate equity through an ideological standpoint, like deficit or grit ideology, that is formulated to discourage direct responses to inequity.
Poverty and the ideological imperative: a call to unhook from deficit and grit ideology and to strive for structural ideology in teacher education: Journal of Education for Teaching: Vol 42, No 4
In this article I explore the educational equity implications of three popular ideological positions that drive teachers’ and teacher educators’understandings of, and responses to, poverty and economic injustice in schools: deficit ideology, grit ideology, and structural ideology. The educator’s ideological position, I illustrate, determines their understandings of conditions such as socio-economic-based outcome disparities. Those understandings, in turn, determine the extent to which the strategies they can imagine have the potential to eliminate or mitigate those disparities. I then argue that teacher education for equity and economic justice must equip pre- and in-service educators with a structural ideology of poverty and economic injustice, based on a sophisticated understanding of relationships between structural inequalities and educational outcome disparities, rather than a deficit or grit ideology, both of which obscure structural inequalities and, as a result, render educators ill-equipped to enact equitable and just teaching, leadership and advocacy.
‘Everybody works hard?’one student asked timidly.‘There must be more to the story than hard work?’ another proposed.
With this we began our exploration on socioeconomically based educational outcome disparities and how to eliminate them.
With this in mind, my purpose is to argue that when it comes to issues surrounding poverty and economic justice the preparation of teachers must be first and foremost an ideological endeavour, focused on adjusting fundamental understandings not only about educational outcome disparities but also about poverty itself. I will argue that it is only through the cultivation of what I call a structural ideology of poverty and economic justice that teachers become equity literate (Gorski 2013), capable of imagining the sorts of solutions that pose a genuine threat to the existence of class inequity in their classrooms and schools. After a brief clarification of my case for the importance of ideology, I begin by describing deficit ideology, the dominant ideological position about poverty that is informed in the US and elsewhere by the myth of meritocracy (Mcnamee and Miller 2009), and its increasingly popular ideological offshoot, grit ideology (Gorski 2016b). after explicating these ideological positions and how they mis- direct interpretations of poverty and its implications, I describe structural ideology, an ideological position through which educators understand educational outcome disparities in the context of structural injustice and the unequal distribution of access and opportunity that underlies poverty (Gorski 2016a). I end by sharing three self-reflective questions designed to help me assess the extent to which my teacher education practice reflect the structural view.
Poverty and the ideological imperative: a call to unhook from deficit and grit ideology and to strive for structural ideology in teacher education: Journal of Education for Teaching: Vol 42, No 4
StimPunks has a great, up-to-date glossary that reflects the breadth and richness of this global neurodivergent community. It captures a reflection of the autistic, neurodivergent and disabled culture and language used within these communities. It is a beautiful display of acceptance, belonging and connecting (NATP). An example of this is their page Five Neurodivergent Love Locutions (Stimpunks, 2022), where they expanded on Myth’s (@neurowonderful) original Twitter/ X post:
“The five neurodivergent love languages: info-dumping, parallel play, support swapping, Please Crush My Soul Back Into My Body, and “I found this cool rock/button/leaf/etc and thought you would like it” (Myth, 2021).
These examples show the different ways many autistic people create a sense of belonging by sharing stories and developing friendships online, as these spaces are often not available or accessible elsewhere. It is through these online spaces that I have grown to feel more accepted and continue to un-learn and re-learn more authentic ways of being with the support of other neurodivergent people who ‘get it’.
Autistic Community: Connections & Becoming
Learn about our authentic ways of being.
Autistic ways of being are human neurological variants that can not be understood without the social model of disability.
Autistic inertia is similar to Newton’s inertia, in that not only do Autistic people have difficulty starting things, but they also have difficulty in stopping things. Inertia can allow Autists to hyperfocus for long periods of time, but it also manifests as a feeling of paralysis and a severe loss of energy when needing to switch from one task to the next.
A communal definition of Autistic ways of being
Every autistic person experiences autism differently, but there are some things that many of us have in common.
- We think differently. We may have very strong interests in things other people don’t understand or seem to care about. We might be great problem-solvers, or pay close attention to detail. It might take us longer to think about things. We might have trouble with executive functioning, like figuring out how to start and finish a task, moving on to a new task, or making decisions.
Routines are important for many autistic people. It can be hard for us to deal with surprises or unexpected changes. When we get overwhelmed, we might not be able to process our thoughts, feelings, and surroundings, which can make us lose control of our body.- We process our senses differently. We might be extra sensitive to things like bright lights or loud sounds. We might have trouble understanding what we hear or what our senses tell us. We might not notice if we are in pain or hungry. We might do the same movement over and over again. This is called “stimming,” and it helps us regulate our senses. For example, we might rock back and forth, play with our hands, or hum.
- We move differently. We might have trouble with fine motor skills or coordination. It can feel like our minds and bodies are disconnected. It can be hard for us to start or stop moving. Speech can be extra hard because it requires a lot of coordination. We might not be able to control how loud our voices are, or we might not be able to speak at all–even though we can understand what other people say.
- We communicate differently. We might talk using echolalia (repeating things we have heard before), or by scripting out what we want to say. Some autistic people use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) to communicate. For example, we may communicate by typing on a computer, spelling on a letter board, or pointing to pictures on an iPad. Some people may also communicate with behavior or the way we act. Not every autistic person can talk, but we all have important things to say.
- We socialize differently. Some of us might not understand or follow social rules that non-autistic people made up. We might be more direct than other people. Eye contact might make us uncomfortable. We might have a hard time controlling our body language or facial expressions, which can confuse non-autistic people or make it hard to socialize.
Some of us might not be able to guess how people feel. This doesn’t mean we don’t care how people feel! We just need people to tell us how they feel so we don’t have to guess. Some autistic people are extra sensitive to other people’s feelings.- We might need help with daily living. It can take a lot of energy to live in a society built for non-autistic people. We may not have the energy to do some things in our daily lives. Or, parts of being autistic can make doing those things too hard. We may need help with things like cooking, doing our jobs, or going out. We might be able to do things on our own sometimes, but need help other times. We might need to take more breaks so we can recover our energy.
Not every autistic person will relate to all of these things. There are lots of different ways to be autistic. That is okay!
About Autism – Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Autism + environment = outcome. Understanding the sensing and perceptual world of autistic people is central to understanding autism.
I have written elsewhere about what I refer to as ‘the golden equation’ – which is:
Autism + environment = outcome
What this means in an anxiety context is that it is the combination of the child and the environment that causes the outcome (anxiety), not ‘just’ being autistic in and of itself. This is both horribly depressing but also a positive. It’s horribly depressing because it demonstrates just how wrong we are currently getting things, but positive in that there are all sorts of things we can do to change environmental situations to subsequently alleviate the anxiety.
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing, Dr Luke Beardon
Understanding the sensing and perceptual world of autistic people is central to understanding autism.
“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
it is so crucial that all environments to which your child has frequent access are assessed from a sensory perspective so that he has the least risk of anxiety. Very often within the sensory world, what seems so minor to others can be the key in terms of what is causing an issue for your child.
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing, Dr Luke Beardon
All these examples show that sensory issues play a massive part in the day-to-day living experiences of your child. It is imperative that this is taken into account in as many environments as possible, in order that anxiety risk is minimized.
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing, Dr Luke Beardon
Sensory needs are an absolute necessity to get right if your child is to feel comfortable (literally and figuratively) at school.
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing, Dr Luke Beardon
Sensory pleasure (which could be viewed as almost the opposite feeling to anxiety) can be one of the richest, most delightful experiences known to the autistic population – and should be encouraged at any appropriate opportunity.
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing, Dr Luke Beardon
Considering and meeting the sensory needs of autistic people in housing | Local Government Association
If we are serious about enabling thriving in autistic lives, we must be serious about the sensory needs of autistic people, in every setting. The benefits of this extend well beyond the autistic communities; what helps autistic people will often help everyone else as well.
Considering and meeting the sensory needs of autistic people in housing | Local Government Association
Finally, the involvement of autistic people in reviewing and changing the sensory environment will support the identification of things that are not visible or audible to their neurotypical counterparts. We strongly encourage this wherever possible.
Considering and meeting the sensory needs of autistic people in housing | Local Government Association
“Small changes that can easily be made to accommodate autism really do add up and can transform a young person’s experience of being in hospital. It really can make all the difference.”
“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
This report introduces autism viewed as a sensory processing difference. It outlines some of the different sensory challenges commonly caused by physical environments and offers adjustments that would better meet sensory need in inpatient services.
“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
We have five external senses and three internal senses. All must be processed at the same time and therefore add to the ‘sensory load’.
“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
Autism is viewed as a sensory processing difference. Information from all of the senses can become overwhelming and can take more time to process. This can cause meltdown or shutdown.
“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi
ADHD (Kinetic Cognitive Style) is not a damaged or defective nervous system. It is a nervous system that works well using its own set of rules.
ADHD or what I prefer to call Kinetic Cognitive Style (KCS) is another good example. (Nick Walker coined this alternative term.) The name ADHD implies that Kinetics like me have a deficit of attention, which could be the case as seen from a certain perspective. On the other hand, a better, more invariantly consistent perspective is that Kinetics distribute their attention differently. New research seems to point out that KCS was present at least as far back as the days in which humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies. In a sense, being a Kinetic in the days that humans were nomads would have been a great advantage. As hunters they would have noticed any changes in their surroundings more easily, and they would have been more active and ready for the hunt. In modern society it is seen as a disorder, but this again is more of a value judgment than a scientific fact.
Bias: From Normalization to Neurodiversity – Neurodivergencia Latina
I’m not a fan of the “ADHD” label because it stands for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” and the terms “deficit” and “disorder” absolutely reek of the pathology paradigm. I’ve frequently suggested replacing it with the term Kinetic Cognitive Style, or KCS; whether that particular suggestion ever catches on or not, I certainly hope that the ADHD label ends up getting replaced with something less pathologizing.
Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker | Autism in Adulthood
Almost every one of my patients wants to drop the term Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, because it describes the opposite of what they experience every moment of their lives. It is hard to call something a disorder when it imparts many positives. ADHD is not a damaged or defective nervous system. It is a nervous system that works well using its own set of rules.
Secrets of the ADHD Brain: Why we think, act, and feel the way we do.
First thing and this really is probably the most important thing that defines the syndrome is the cognitive component of ADHD: an interest-based nervous system.
So ADHD is a genetic neurological brain based difficulty with getting engaged as the situation demands.
People with ADHD are able to get engaged and have their performance, their mood, their energy level, determined by the momentary sense of four things:
Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks: RSD, Hyperarousal, More (w/ Dr. William Dodson)
- Interest (Fascination)
- Challenge or Competitiveness
- Novelty (Creativity)
- Urgency (Usually a deadline)
Glickman & Dodd (1998) found that adults with self-reported ADHD scored higher than other adults on self-reported ability to hyper-focus on “urgent tasks”, such as last-minute projects or preparations. Adults in the ADHD group were uniquely able to postpone eating, sleeping and other personal needs and stay absorbed in the “urgent task” for an extended time.
From an evolutionary viewpoint, “hyperfocus” was advantageous, conferring superb hunting skills and a prompt response to predators. Also, hominins have been hunter gatherers throughout 90% of human history from the beginning, before evolutionary changes, fire-making, and countless breakthroughs in stone-age societies.
Hunter versus farmer hypothesis – Wikipedia
The most important feature is that attention is not deficit, it is inconsistent.
“Look back over your entire life; if you have been able to get engaged and stay engaged with literally any task of your life, have you ever found something you couldn’t do?”
A person with ADHD will answer, “No. If I can get started and stay in the flow, I can do anything.
Omnipotential
People with ADHD are omnipotential. It’s not an exaggeration, it’s true. They really can do anything.
Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks: RSD, Hyperarousal, More (w/ Dr. William Dodson)
Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks: RSD, Hyperarousal, More (w/ Dr. William Dodson)
- Performance is usually the only aspect that most people look for.
- Boredom and lack of engagement is almost physically painful to people with an ADHD nervous system.
- When bored, ADHDers are irritable, negativistic, tense,
argumentative, and have no energy to do anything.- ADDers will do almost anything to relieve this dysphoria. Self-medication. Stimulus seeking. “Pick a fight.”
- When engaged, ADHDers are instantly energetic, positive, and social.
- This shifting of mood and energy is often misinterpreted as Bipolar Disorder.
People with ADHD live right now. They have to be personally interested, challenged, and find it novel or urgent right now, this instant, or nothing happens because they can’t get engaged with the task.
Passion. What is it about your life that gives your life meaning purpose? What is it that you’re eager to get up and go do in the morning? Unfortunately, only about one in four people ever discover what that is, but it is probably the most reliable way of staying in the zone that we know of.
Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks: RSD, Hyperarousal, More (w/ Dr. William Dodson)
We have a couple of theme songs for KCS/DREAD/ADHD in our community: Guided by Angels by Amyl and the Sniffers and Monkey Mind by The Bobby Lees.
Guided by angels But they're not heavenly They're on my body And they guide me heavenly The angels guide me heavenly, heavenly Energy, good energy and bad energy I've got plenty of energy It's my currency I spend, protect my energy, currency Guided by Angels by Amyl and the Sniffers
Monkey Mind
It's just my monkey mind
Monkey Mind
It's just my
I take him out, and then I sit him down
I look him in the eye, and say no more
monkeying around
Now you look-y here, you gonna leave me
alone
Cause there's no room here for a little
monkey in my home
Monkey Mind
It's just my monkey mind
Monkey Mind
It's just my
That monkey mind, he likes to eat himself alive
Think he's done, and then he takes another bite
Now see, I gotta learn to be kind
To my monkey mind, cause he'll be with me till I die
Monkey Mind
It's just my monkey mind
Monkey just my
Monkey Mind by The Bobby Lees
Redefining Autism Science with Monotropism and the Double Empathy Problem
Monotropism and the Double Empathy Problem are two of the biggest and most important things to happen to autism research. In the previous two issues of the Guide to the NeurodiVerse, “From an Ivory Tower Built on Sand to Open, Participatory, Emancipatory, Activist Research” and “Mental Health and Epistemic Justice“, we tackled some bad trends in autism science. Here, we celebrate two trends that get it right.
Monotropism is a theory of autism developed by autistic people, initially by Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson.
Welcome – Monotropism
Monotropic minds tend to have their attention pulled more strongly towards a smaller number of interests at any given time, leaving fewer resources for other processes. We argue that this can explain nearly all of the features commonly associated with autism, directly or indirectly. However, you do not need to accept it as a general theory of autism in order for it to be a useful description of common autistic experiences and how to work with them.
The ‘double empathy problem’: Ten years on – Damian Milton, Emine Gurbuz, Betriz Lopez, 2022
These two videos, totaling less than 10 minutes, are wonderful ways to get in touch with modern autism science.
Understanding monotropism and the double empathy problem will help you get things right, instead of wrong, when interacting with autistic people.
If an autistic person is pulled out of monotropic flow too quickly, it causes our sensory systems to disregulate.
This in turn triggers us into emotional dysregulation, and we quickly find ourselves in a state ranging from uncomfortable, to grumpy, to angry, or even triggered into a meltdown or a shutdown.
This reaction is also often classed as challenging behavior when really it is an expression of distress caused by the behavior of those around us.
How you can get things wrong:
An introduction to monotropism – YouTube
- Not preparing for transition
- Too many instructions
- Speaking too quickly
- Not allowing processing time
- Using demanding language
- Using rewards or punishments
- Poor sensory environments
- Poor communication environments
- Making assumptions
- A lack of insightful and informed staff reflection
⛺️ We Are a NeurodiVenture
We are a NeurodiVenture and a Teal organization running on:
We Run On
The NeurodiVenture Operating Model
We do it in a trauma and neurodiversity informed way using polyvagal theory and the neuroscience of community.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
What does that mean?
In other words…
One Idea Per Line
- NeurodiVenture is an organization run by neurodivergent people.
- It provides a safe and nurturing environment for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction.
- It is inclusive and non-hierarchical.
- It operates on principles such as the advice process, psychological safety, self-determination theory, the prosocial framework, mutual trust, collaborative niche construction, open source, restorative practices, and transformative justice.
- It is trauma and neurodiversity informed, using polyvagal theory and the neuroscience of community.
- NeurodiVentures create safe spaces for groups of autistic and neurodivergent individuals.
- These spaces allow for sharing knowledge, cultivating collective intelligence, and offering unique and innovative services to the world.
One Paragraph Summary
NeurodiVenture is an organization that is run by neurodivergent people. It aims to create a safe and supportive environment for different ways of thinking, creativity, exploration, and working together on specific interests. They use various methods and theories, such as the advice process, psychological safety, self-determination theory, prosocial framework, mutual trust, collaborative niche construction, open source, restorative practices, transformative justice, trauma-informed approaches, and neurodiversity-informed approaches. The goal is to provide a space where autistic and other neurodivergent individuals can come together, share knowledge, and use their unique skills and talents to create innovative and valuable services for the world.
Extended Summary
NeurodiVenture is an organization that is operated by neurodivergent individuals and aims to create a safe and nurturing environment for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction. It is an inclusive organization that values the contributions and perspectives of neurodivergent people.
The organization follows the principles of Teal organizations, which emphasize self-management and distributed decision-making. They use the advice process, where decisions are made by seeking advice from those who will be affected by the decision, rather than relying on a hierarchical structure.
Psychological safety is a key aspect of NeurodiVenture, ensuring that individuals feel safe to express themselves and share their ideas without fear of judgment or criticism. This fosters an environment that encourages open communication and collaboration.
The organization also follows the principles of self-determination theory, which focuses on supporting individuals’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This means that individuals have the freedom to make choices, develop their skills, and build meaningful relationships within the organization.
NeurodiVenture operates within the prosocial framework, which promotes behaviors that benefit others and society as a whole. This framework encourages cooperation, empathy, and compassion among members of the organization.
Mutual trust is another important aspect of NeurodiVenture. Trust is built through open and honest communication, reliability, and respect for each other’s perspectives and contributions.
Collaborative niche construction is a concept that involves creating and shaping environments that align with the unique strengths and abilities of neurodivergent individuals. This allows them to contribute their innovative and unique services to the world.
The organization also embraces open source principles, which means that knowledge, information, and resources are shared openly and freely. This fosters a culture of collaboration and continuous learning.
Restorative practices and transformative justice are approaches used by NeurodiVenture to address conflicts and restore relationships within the organization. These approaches focus on repairing harm, building understanding, and promoting healing.
NeurodiVenture takes a trauma-informed and neurodiversity-informed approach, recognizing and accommodating the unique needs and experiences of individuals who have experienced trauma or who are neurodivergent. This ensures that the organization is sensitive to their needs and provides a supportive environment.
Polyvagal theory and the neuroscience of community are used to understand and support the social and emotional well-being of individuals within NeurodiVenture. These theories provide insights into how the nervous system responds to social interactions and how to create environments that promote connection and belonging.
Overall, NeurodiVenture is a collaborative and inclusive organization that values the contributions of neurodivergent individuals. It provides a safe and nurturing environment for them to share their knowledge, cultivate collective intelligence, and offer innovative and unique services to the world.
AI Disclosure: The summaries above were created with the help of Elephas AI Assistant.
We’re co-creating Autistic collaboration at human scale.
The Stimpunks website is also an awesomely rich source of links! Semantic links rather than commercial advertisements are the life blood of the internet – the Autistic online habitat.
We’re co-recreating Autistic collaboration at human scale on a daily basis, in the many wide open cracks, in the cognitive blind spots of the algorithms of capital.
Jorn Bettin, author of “The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations“
The force of life is distributed and decentralised, and it might be a good idea to organise and collaborate accordingly.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
The limits of human scale, the capacity for cultural evolution, and the resultant cultural diversity are best appreciated as the most valuable and unique species level survival advantage of humans over all other primate species. Human societies that operate at human scales are highly resilient and adaptive. Bands of hunter gatherers could rely on the human capacity for flexible cooperation and collective intelligence that is unlocked by egalitarian social norms within small groups.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
It takes a village.
Whānau = extended family, family group, a familiar term of address to a number of people – the primary economic unit of traditional Māori society. In the modern context the term is sometimes used to include friends who may not have any kinship ties to other members.
There is the saying that “It takes a village to raise a child.” The Autistic translation of this saying is “For an Autistic person it takes an Autistic whānau to feel loved and alive.” Without the support of an Autistic whānau, Autistic life feels like a life in continuous emergency mode.
Whānau : extended family, family group, a familiar term of address to a number of people – the primary economic unit of traditional Māori society. In the modern context the term is sometimes used to include friends who may not have any kinship ties to other members.
Whānau are not powered by adrenalin but by love and mutual care. Most Autists are not born into healthy Autistic whānau.
Takiwātanga : Autistic ways of being, takiwātanga literally means “in their own space and time.”
Whānau is much more than the Western notion of “family”. It is a deep connection, a bond that you are born into that no one can take away from you.
Whakawhanaungatanga : process of establishing relationships, relating well to others.
Whakapapa : the “genealogical descent of all living things from God to the present time. “Since all living things including rocks and mountains are believed to possess whakapapa, it is further defined as “a basis for the organisation of knowledge in the respect of the creation and development of all things”. Hence, whakapapa also implies a deep connection to land and the roots of one’s ancestry. In order to trace one’s whakapapa it is essential to identify the location where one’s ancestral heritage began; “you can’t trace it back any further”. “Whakapapa links all people back to the land and sea and sky and outer universe, therefore, the obligations of whanaungatanga extend to the physical world and all being in it”.
In a healthy culture Autistic children are assisted in co-creating their unique Autistic whānau, but in our “civilisation” this cultural knowledge has been lost and is suppressed. In mainstream society people don’t understand how Autistic people support each other, love each other, and care for each other in ways that go far beyond the culturally impaired neuronormative imagination.
Autists depend on assistance from others in ways that differ from the cultural norm – and that is pathologised in hypernormative societies. However, the many ways in which non-autistic people depend on others is considered “normal”. The endless chains of trauma must be broken.
There is the saying that “It takes a village to raise a child.” The Autistic translation of this saying is “For an Autistic person it takes an Autistic whānau to feel loved and alive.”
The foundation of our whakapapa is the ocean and the mountains. Via Autistic trauma peer support we are embarking on the journey of co-creating healthy Autistic whānau and Autistic culture all over the world.
Depowered feral Autistic relationships | Autistic Collaboration
A NeurodiVenture is an inclusive non-hierarchical organisation operated by neurodivergent people that provides a safe and nurturing environment for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction.
In Te Reo Māori the NeurodiVenture concept translates to Neurodivergent whānau. Indigenous languages like Te Reo Māori have important words for concepts that have been suppressed by colonialism.
Without the support of an Autistic whānau, Autistic life feels like a life in continuous emergency mode.
Autistic people – The cultural immune system of human societies
Many Artistic & Autistic people are unemployable by organisations that operate hierarchical structures. There is an urgent need to catalyse and co-create NeurodiVentures (worker co-ops) and healthy A♾tistic whānau all over the world.
Many Artistic & Autistic people are unemployable by organisations that operate hierarchical structures. There is an urgent need to catalyse and co-create NeurodiVentures (worker co-ops) and healthy A♾tistic whānau all over the world. A♾tists depend on assistance from others in ways that differ from the cultural norm – and that is pathologised in hypernormative societies. However, the many ways in which non-a♾tistic people depend on others is considered “normal”. The endless chains of trauma must be broken.
The ecological niche of A♾tistic peoples | Autistic Collaboration
The technologies we develop and use tend to reflect the level of collaboration and competitiveness within our culture. In our role as conscious designers of technology, humans have the potential to influence the level of collaboration in our culture in profound ways, especially in a highly networked digital world.
The NeurodiVenture operating model not only raises neurodiversity as a top level concern for good company but by imposing a hard limit on group size (in the case of S23M enforced by our company constitution) it also ensures that every member of the team has spare cognitive capacity for building and maintaining trusted relationships with the outside world, whilst at the same time encouraging creative collaboration for life.
Organising for neurodivergent collaboration | Autistic Collaboration
Beyond eliminating formal hierarchical structures the NeurodiVenture model also removes all incentives for the emergence of informal “power-over” structures via transparency of all individual competency networks for the benefit of everyone within the company. This is perhaps the most radical idea within the NeurodiVenture model.
Transparency of individual competency networks enables meta knowledge (who has which knowledge and who entrusts whom with questions or needs in relation to specific domains of knowledge) to flow freely within an organisation.
The conceptualisation of meta knowledge flows via individual competency networks assists the coordination of activities via the advice process outlined above and via regular Open Space workshops, and it acts as an effective dampener on the informal hierarchies that can easily come to plague hierarchical and “non-hierarchical” organisations.
Organising for neurodivergent collaboration | Autistic Collaboration
NeurodiVentures are a concrete example of an emerging cultural species that provides safe and nurturing environments for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
- Visibly extend trust to people, to release the handbrake to collaboration.
- Unlock the tacit knowledge within the group.
- Provide a space for creative freedom.
- Help repair frayed relationships.
- Replace fear with courage.
By focusing on the human scale outside the theatre we can reconnect with the physical and ecological niche that supports our human needs. The more collaborative, egalitarian, and accomodating of cultural diversity, the surrounding cultural environment becomes, the less NeurodiVentures will be perceived as unusual, and the more neurodivergent people will be able to spend significant time outside the protective islands of safety provided by a NeurodiVenture without getting overwhelmed.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
The open source NeurodiVenture operating model for employee owned companies primarily consists of a set of first principles that can be adapted to the unique needs of a specific team of neurodivergent people. There is no need to be prescriptive about how to go about forming and operating a NeurodiVenture, because there is no right way or best way.
Autistic people with complementary talents and skills are ideally positioned to jointly design, develop, and offer highly unique products and services, without any need for external capital, and without any need for an employer or manager.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
Chosen families are nonbiological kinship bonds, whether legally recognized or not, deliberately chosen for the purpose of mutual support and love.
According to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Marriage, Family, and Couples Counseling, “chosen families are nonbiological kinship bonds, whether legally recognized or not, deliberately chosen for the purpose of mutual support and love.” The term originated within the LGBTQ community and was used to describe early queer gatherings like the Harlem Drag Balls of the late nineteenth century.
The circumstances surrounding the birth of the first “chosen families”—intense loneliness and isolation faced by those rejected by their biological kin—continue today. Nearly 40 percent of today’s homeless youth identify as queer, and a recent study found that roughly 64 percent of LGBTQ baby boomers have built, and continue to rely on, chosen families.
“Chosen families,” though, can form as a result of any person’s experience with their biological family that leaves needs unmet. Friends who become your family of choice may provide you with a healthier family environment than the one in which you were raised, or their proximity may allow you to rely on them when your biological family isn’t located nearby. A chosen family can be part of a person’s growing network, and can help construct a wide foundation of support that continues to grow with time.
Finding Connection Through “Chosen Family” | Psychology Today
Here’s a heart-strumming rendition of “Chosen Family” from Rina Sawayama (starting at 8:29).
Tell me your story and I'll tell you mine
I'm all ears, take your time, we've got all night
Show me the rivers crossed, the mountains scaled
Show me who made you walk all the way here
Family of choice might seem like a contradiction but your ‘chosen’ family consists of those who accept you for who you are and they want the best for you. They support you in your chosen ventures, help you when you need to make decisions and tell you when you might be going down the wrong track! As in any other family, you might have your differences, but they are always there for you. If you can find yourself among a unit of supporters who love you unconditionally, will offer a place to you that allows you to be yourself, safely and without barriers, you might have found your ‘chosen’ family. This family might not be all in one place.
The Autistic Trans Guide to Life
There is something very special about forming relationships with people who understand and accept you for who you are. You may hear the phrase ‘chosen family’ used by LGBTQIA+ people to describe these relationships – people they have met, formed bonds with, and chosen to have as their family separately to their ‘real’ family.
Queerly Autistic: The Ultimate Guide For LGBTQIA+ Teens On The Spectrum
These types of relationships are especially important to LGBTQIA+ people. There is a long history of us being isolated from our ‘official’ family and friends due to our sexuality and gender, and so the idea of ‘found’ or ‘chosen’ family has a strong emotional meaning in the community. There are still people today whose family react badly to them coming out (as we discussed in the chapter on coming out), so relationships with other people in the LGBTQIA+ community are just as important as they ever were.
Even if your family is accepting and loving, relationships within the community can still be very important. They certainly have been for me.
Queerly Autistic: The Ultimate Guide For LGBTQIA+ Teens On The Spectrum
I will also say this: I have never, not even for one single second, regretted it. I have never regretted doing the right thing or fighting for the health and wholeness of others even when it causes me pain and puts me at significant personal risk. I have lost nothing that I needed, because I had it all inside me. And the people that have now become my precious, chosen family are people I would never have met if I hadn’t been walking this path.
#ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing
“In my phone contacts, I put emojis by their names. I put strawberries next to people who were super loving. I put seedling emojis by folks who taught me things that made me think or grow.”
Within a year of his making these changes in his life, many of Samuel’s “strawberry people” had become members of his found family. They had his back as he worked through therapy for PTSD and eating disorder recovery. The strawberry people even became friends with one another—Samuel writes that they all talk in a single group chat.
Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation
Where do I belong?
Where do I belong?
Tell me your story and I'll tell you mine
I'm all ears, take your time, we got all night
Show me the rivers crossed, the mountains scaled
Show me who made you walk all the way here
Settle down, put your bags down
(Ooh) You're alright now
We don't need to be related to relate
We don't need to share genes or a surname
You are
You are
My chosen
Chosen family
So what if we don't look the same?
We been going through the same thing
You are
You are
My chosen
Chosen family
⚖️ Our Creed
If you’re building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day.
Why Your Company Should Have a Creed
Here is our creed, broken into 4 sets of statements.
I know that pluralism is our reality. I know that Neurodiversity is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation, and that…
I know that pluralism is our reality. I know that Neurodiversity is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation, and that Neurodiversity friendly forms of collaboration hold the potential to transform pathologically competitive and toxic teams and cultures. I know Autistic forms of communication within a neurodiverse team and within a psychologically safe environment impart a collaborative advantage to the entire team. I know neurodiversity, the social model of disability, and intersectionality are urgently needed reframing necessary to equity and inclusion.
I reframe out of the confines of the medical model and pathology paradigm and into…
I reframe out of the confines of the medical model and pathology paradigm and into the respectfully connected expanse of the biopsychosocial model and the Neurodiversity paradigm. I reframe from deficit ideology to structural ideology.
I center the marginalized and the different. I center edge cases, because…
I center the marginalized and the different. I center edge cases, because edge cases are stress cases and design is tested at the edges. I center neurodivergent and disabled experience in service to all bodyminds.
I will never stop learning. I will communicate as much as possible because…
I will never stop learning. I will communicate as much as possible because communication is oxygen to an organization. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out another Stimpunk. I will maintain learner safety and remember what it is like to be a new contributor. I will make other people feel equal and not alone. I will build with, not for. I will default to open. I will move carefully and fix things. I will make things that help people, and I will not make things that harm people. I will bake ethics into everything I do. I will be a threat to inequity in my spheres of influence.
🎸 Our Rules of Punk
The forces of neuronormativity feel overwhelming in this age of mass behaviorism and unvarnished eugenics.
…mass neurodivergent disablement and constant, widespread anxiety, panic, depression, and mental illness, combined with systemic discrimination of neurodivergent people, is a problem specific to the current historical era. Hegemonic neuronormative domination, in other words, is a key problem of our time.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman
Against that tide, we embrace our weird potentials. We neuroqueer the social world.
In line with a disability justice approach, one of the more positive recent developments is the theory and praxis of neuroqueering. Stemming from the work of Nick Walker and Remi Yergeau, neuroqueering focuses on embracing weird potentials within one’s neurocognitive space, and turning everyday comportment and behaviour into forms of resistance. This has provided a new tool for combatting neuronormativity from within the constraints imposed by history and current material conditions. By queering the social world, new possibilities are carved out for the future, helping us not just challenge aspects of the current order but to start collectively imagining what a different world could be like.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman
We make room for all of us when we embrace the rules of punk.
The First Rule of Punk: Be Yourself
Our Second Rule of Punk: Reframe
When we reframe, we perceive others such that they too can be themselves.
I make the right mistakes
And I say what I mean
Spare me from the mold
Live your truth. Shred some gnar.
- Be yourself.
- Reframe, so that other’s can be themselves.
- Live your truth.
- Shred some gnar.
🔈 Testimonials
- Here are a few testimonials from allies.
- Each testimonial is accompanied by a song that shares the vibe.
- An accordion with more writing from the ally is also included for each testimonial.
- More testimonials from allies and grantees are available on our Umbrella page.
Education is relational. It’s contextual. It involves understanding the human beings in the room. —Nick Covington
The quotes below contain links to our extensive glossary. We link to our glossary throughout our website.
There is no what works for everybody. There is no silver bullet in education. Education is relational. It’s contextual. It involves understanding the human beings in the room.
Nick Covington, Human Restoration Project Talks Professional Learning & Progressive Pedagogy
Hope is a platform for action.
Good digital pedagogy is accessible to everyone.
Nick Covington, MINDFOOD I: Top 10 Books Every Progressive Educator Should Read – YouTube
Make room for play. Play is learning.
Nick Covington, Play-Based Learning is learning! (with Lego) – YouTube
There is a point to taking these individualistic actions towards systemic change, because kids notice this stuff.
Restoring Humanity to Education w/ Nick & Chris of HRP | CTRH2023 – YouTube
Progressive education is research-based education. We have the research on our side. The traditional practices do not.
Restoring Humanity to Education w/ Nick & Chris of HRP | CTRH2023 – YouTube
Where behaviorism fails to foster agency it simultaneously creates a framework for excluding neurodivergent and disabled students while enabling the policing of students from non-dominant cultural, linguistic, and racial backgrounds.
A Human Centered Education: Ends Dehumanizing Practices – YouTube
My head is on straight
My heart is in peace
My soul is incredibly
Ready to change history
It’s a good day
To fight the system
(To fight the system)
It’s a good, good, good day, yes,
A good, good, good day
Neuroinclusive Learning & the Brain with Michael Weingarth
Yet bolstering that intensity and passion is the deep understanding of a body of literature from subfields of neuroscience calling into question what the current popular model of “raw cognition” – represented by #cogsci, ResearchEd, and elsewhere in professional development – leaves out. As well as how its premature generalization into school settings – often wrapped up in language of “evidence-based” or “research-based” practice – is derived from evidence & research that excludes disability & neurodivergence. The consequence is a school setting whose values & measures, pacing guides, practices & interventions center the mythical “normal”.
Neuroinclusive Learning & the Brain w/ Michael Weingarth | Human Restoration Project | Podcast
“All brains compensate all the time, and they do it in ways that are absolutely unique. School pushes certain categories of compensation outside of its box and gives it a bad label.”
Neuroinclusive Learning & the Brain w/ Michael Weingarth | Human Restoration Project | Podcast
Our students are not surgically modified dogs nor are they pigeons in operant conditioning chambers attempting to learn nonsense words. No child enters a classroom devoid of emotion, interest, or prior knowledge. Owing to the key distinctions between the controlled laboratory and the living classroom, there simply may be no connection between what is taught and what is learned; or between the educational intervention and the desired outcome. This is why, in pedagogies centered on instruction drawn from the narrow view of “The Science of Learning,” behaviorism is a complexity control meant to reduce the number of possible variables between instruction and assessment; to better reproduce the uncomplicated relationship between variables in the Skinner Box. We know from listening to students themselves that there has been a persistent crisis in schools, even before COVID: students ask fewer questions the longer they remain in school, engagement plummets alongside mental health, and absenteeism surges. Ultimately, any science of learning matters far less than its implementation. Maintaining fidelity to what happened in, say, Pavlov’s lab matters significantly less if the practices derived from his work contribute to stress, anxiety, and alienation in students.
If the perfect education system requires that you dehumanize the people in it — adults and kids alike — that’s not a system that “works” by most metrics worth caring about. The kids in our schools have to be viewed as more than behaviorist subjects to be acted upon. If we at least admit that much, then the business of teaching gets far more complicated. Suddenly there are a number of other factors we must tend to that matter a great deal. I’ll quote again from apparent “pseudoscientist” Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, “As human beings, feeling alive means feeling alive in a body but also feeling alive in a society, in a culture; being loved, being part of a group, being accepted, and feeling purposeful.” These are self-evident truths that we are finally beginning to explore the neurobiological basis for in ways that shatter many previous models of the brain that still hold cultural sway.
Beyond Pavlov’s Perfect Student | Human Restoration Project | Nick Covington Michael Weingarth
Research increasingly recognizes that, as medical researchers Peter Stilwel and Katharine Harmon write, “Cognition is not simply a brain event.”(*) Drawing from their intuitive 5E model, we can better understand learning as a process of sense-making about ourselves in relation to the world that is:
Embodied – sense-making shaped by being in a body
Embedded – bodies exist within a context in the world
Enactive – active agents in interactions with the world
Emotive – sense-making always happens in an emotional context
Extended – sense-making relies on non-biological tools and technologies
There is No Such Thing As “The Science of Learning” | Human Restoration Project | Nick Covington Michael Weingarth
Would You Like to Know More?
Annie Murphy Paul – The Extended Mind
Mary Helen Immordino Yang – Emotions, Learning and the Brain
Naomi Fisher – Changing Our Minds
Andratesha Fritzgerald – Anti-Racism and Universal Design for Learning
Luiz Pessoa – The Entangled Brain
Because we're standing in the way of control
We will live our lives
“Living in a neurotypical world run by productivism is uniquely challenging for autistic people.” ––Matthew the #ActuallyAutistic Coach
In order for us to thrive in our modern society we have been forced to mask, to compensate, to change in order to survive. Those methods have more often than not actually harmed us, not helped us grow. Each of us has parts of ourselves hidden inside behind years and layers of accommodating society.
Many parts of our true selves, our true powers and strengths, are little known or unknown to us. I, like you, have been there. I have learned to thrive in a neurotypical world while honoring my autistic self and I want to help you thrive too by unmasking and discovering yourself. Unmasking leads to thriving and living life to the fullest extent possible. Let me assist you in showing you how via Autism Life Coaching and peer support. I offer both individual sessions as well as group workshops that have the extra benefit of connecting with your fellow autistic peers. I also offer numerous free discussion circles every month in order to create a supportive and thriving space for autistics worldwide.
The #ActuallyAutistic Coach | Autistic Life Coach | Autism Coach
Black, white, green or blue
Show off your natural hue
Flamingo, oh oh oh-woah
If you're multicouloured that's cool too
You don't need to change
It's boring being the same
Flamingo, oh oh oh-woah
You're pretty either way
📢 Announcements
We’re pausing most of our operations from March 9th – March 24th. We need a mental health break.
🎪 Upcoming Events
We serve neurodivergent and disabled people local to us in Austin TX, Denver CO, New Orleans LA, and Ketchum ID with passion-driven programming driven by our learners. We do concerts, lunch & learns, field trips, art shows, art lessons, dance lessons, cooking lessons, adulting lessons, meetups, marketplaces, and more. We pursue experiential learning and practice collaboration and iteration while doing work that impacts community. And, also, having fun.
Visit our Events page for more upcoming events as well as a gallery of past events. Visit our Events Field Guide for how we put on welcoming events.
Attending one of our events? How can we meet your needs? (survey)
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Picnic at the Zoo!
Who: Members of the Dripping Springs Friendship Club What: picnic lunch and zoo visit (bring your lunch/drink) They do not have water fountains, but do sell bottled water in the gift shop if needed. When: Friday ~ May 3, 2024 starting @ 12:30 PM Where: Austin Zoo ~ 10808 Rawhide Trail Austin, TX 78736 Why:…
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Lunch & Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire movie in Bee Cave
Who: Members of the Dripping Springs Friendship Club Lunch ~ All Star Burger @ Noon (yes, 12 PM) Movie ~ Cinemark: starts @ 1:25 PM The movie is rated PG-13 and it’s 1 hour and 55 minutes long. Please let Norah know if you’d like to attend, if you have not already done so previously.…
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“A Year with Frog and Toad” Musical
Date: Saturday 05/11/2024 Time: 2 PM CST is when the performance begins Location: The Kleberg Stage (at Zach Theatre) Address: 1421 West Riverside Drive Austin, TX 78704 Group: Dripping Springs Friendship Club ~ Tickets have been purchased for all group members that checked “yes” on the previous poll indicating availability and interest in attending this…
About Our Events
Stimpunks Learning Space offers community and space for passion-based, human-centered learning with purpose. Our learners collaborate on distributed, multi-age, cross-disciplinary teams with a neurodiverse array of creatives doing work that impacts community. Via equity, access, empathy, and inclusivity, we create anti-ableist space compatible with neurodiversity, the social model of disability, and all types of bodyminds. We create space for the neurodivergent and disabled people most ill-served by “empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity“.
We pursue programming driven by passion and purpose. A teenage Stimpunk helped us put on Metal Health Fest. He came up with the idea and collaborated with us and a live music event coordinator using our communication stack. He helped pick the lineup, design the posters, write the copy, deal with logistics and legalities, setup the speakers and soundboard, and keep people safe. He helped troubleshoot along the way, keeping the event on schedule and on budget. He learned collaboration while putting on a show that our community really enjoyed. To top it off, he earned service hours at school.
Check the page for our learning space for more. Our learners help put on our events, climbing learning curves as we go.
🎨 Featured Artist: Adriel Jeremiah Wool
Our featured artist is Adriel Jeremiah Wool.
Adriel Jeremiah is an computer programmer with a deep background in origami and folding. This artwork is an extension of a world view involving folding; often involving higher dimensional spaces. Many of these designs contain the mathematical magic of the transcendental numbers of nature, and all of them are the extension of the provisions of space itself; to be both physically folded, and conceptually folded, circularily and across many levels of expression.
Shop Art by Adriel
His spectacular new piece derives its color stream from a fluorite crystal that has a spheralite imperfection / inclusion (the red, purple, and orange).
Description: A bursting kaleidoscopic geometrical form with 4 sides of symmetry pointing angularly to each of the four corners of a square shaped canvas against a dark grey textured wall. There is a small red shaped plus at the very center, surrounded by orangish-peach and periwinkle butterfly like shapes at 45 degree angles from each other aligned to the mid center going up and also to the sides. The butterfly shapes are encased in a deeper red flower like shape before a region of light blue geometric textures. Near the corners are feathered white, dark grey-purple, burgundy and orange feather like edges.
AJ describes what these fractal pieces are in this accordion. Their construction will broaden your perspective on perspective.
My artwork is digital photography in a world where objects exist in more than 3 dimensions, and where no known means of physical representation has yet been discovered to exist.
Adriel Jeremiah Wool
AJ is a regular contributor at Stimpunks. He kindly licenses his work as free cultural work. He helps us tell our stories with his art, music, photography, videos, audio engineering, poetry, prose, and lived experience.
AJ has a gallery in Ketchum, Idaho. Drop by if you’re around. He tries to make it a welcoming third place.
⛰️ A Journey Through the Rough Terrain of Lived Experience
The first six pages of our website are a scrollytellying journey through the rough terrain of lived experience punctuated with spectacular art and music. Made with agony and joy, this is our story of surviving, reframing, and finding like-minded misfits.
- Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People
- An Encyclopedia of Disability and Difference
- Take Them Together: Neurodiversity and Disability Justice
- Our Umbrella: It Is Time to Celebrate Our Interdependence!
- Reframe Disability and Difference: We’re Going to Rewrite the Narratives
- Happy Flappy: Let’s Bolster Against Stress and Pass Bodily Survival Knowledge Down
Pages in the journey are connected with a “Continue” button at the bottom of each page.
Content warning: Our website includes music, lyrics, writing, and art that address ableism, eugenics, exclusion, mental health, depression, dysphoria, behaviorism, abuse, chronic pain, chronic illness, trauma, and death. There are a few swear words in quoted materials. Also included is an outpouring of neurodivergent and disabled perspective, culture, and joy.
🐉 Bunnybadgers, Wolpertingers, and Dragons, Oh My
Some of the things you’ll encounter on your journey:
- cat massages
- sick, dope, fire art
- lots of music
- sassy dances
- wolpertingers
- bunnybadgers
- bunny buns
- rainbow dragons
- Zelda maps
- flowerpunks
- punkflowers
- fractals
- hamster + lion = hamlion, rawr squeak
- a rainbow shrimp visualizer
- punk attitude
- the first rule of punk
- punky reggae parties
- screams into the void
- celebrations of interdependence
- the entwined nature of queer and neurodivergent people
- the entwined nature of queer and neurodivergent liberation
- words that have the power to change attitudes
- political and cultural connection with the neurodiversity and disability rights movements
Bearmouse is Ryan’s Randimal. They is a punk rock research storyteller here to guide you through our encyclopedia of disability and difference.
“What makes us different, makes all the difference in the world.” –Randimals
Coming Up: 📚🌈♿️ An Encyclopedia of Disability and Difference
- 📜 Scrollytelling: How We Tell Our Stories
- ⛰️ A Journey Through the Rough Terrain of Lived Experience
- 📼 Bricolage, Remixing, Constructionism, and Pastiche: Behind Our Punk Rock Research-Storytelling
- 📋 Our Conventions
- 🥡 Main Takeaways
- 🤖 Search and AI
- 🚨 Content Warning
- 🐉 Bunnybadgers, Wolpertingers, and Dragons, Oh My
- 🐇🕳️ A Rabbit Warren of Treasure Troves
- 🎸 Ready, Punk? Rock and scroll!
- ⏭️ Coming Up on the Next Page
- 🌈♿️ Take Them Together: Neurodiversity and Disability Justice
Continue down the rabbit hole. Delve into our encyclopedia of disability and difference and learn about our punk rock research scrollytelling.
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