Cavendish Space: psychologically & sensory safe spaces suited to zone work, intermittent collaborationThe best solutions come from “intermittent collaboration” — group work punctuated by breaks to think & work by ourselves.Daniel Pink Our cave, campfire, and watering hole moods map to the red, yellow,… More, and collaborative niche construction
Positive Niche Construction–practice of differentiating instruction for the neurodiverse brainNeurodiversity in the Classroom Positive niche construction is a strengths-based approach to educating students with disabilities. Reimagining Inclusion with Positive Niche… More.
Since readingThere are three types of reading: eye reading, ear reading, and finger reading.The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan: A Blueprint for Renewing Your Child’s Confidence and Love of Learning Most schools and… More NeuroTribes, we think of psychologically & sensory safe spaces suited to zone work as “Cavendish bubbles” and “Cavendish space”, after Henry Cavendish, the wizard of Clapham Common and discoverer of hydrogen. The privilegesTo not have conversations because they make you uncomfortable is the definition of privilege. Your comfort is not at the center of this discussion.Brené Brown Power can be understood as… More of nobility afforded room for his differencesOur friends and allies at Randimals have a saying, What makes us different, makes all the difference in the world.Randimals We agree. Randimals are made up of two different animals… More, allowing him the space and opportunity to become “one of the first true scientists in the modern sense.”
Let’s build psychologically safePsychological safety is a condition in which you feel (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to challenge the status quo—all without fear of… More homes of opportunity without the requirement of nobility or privilege. Replace the trappings of the compliance classroom with student-created context, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and BYOC (Bring/Build Your Own Comfort). Let’s hit thrift stores, buy lumber, apply some hacker ethos, and turn the complianceNoncompliance is a social skill.Noncompliance is one of the most important social skills. Noncompliance skills make it possible to say no, even when others want your right to say no to… More classroom into something psychologically safe and comfortable to a team of young minds engaged in passion-based learning. Inform spaces with neurodiversityNeurodiversity is the diversity of human minds, the infinite variation in neurocognitive functioning within our species.NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS Neurodiversity is a biological fact. It’s not a perspective, an approach, a… More and the social modelIn the broadest sense, the social model of disability is about nothing more complicated than a clear focus on the economic, environmental and cultural barriers encountered by people who are… More of disability so that they welcome and include all minds and bodies. Provide quiet spaces for high memory state zone work where students can escape sensory overwhelm, slip into flow states, and enjoy a maker’s schedule. Provide social spaces for collaboration and camaraderie. Create cave, campfire, and watering hole zones. Develop neurological curb cuts. Fill our classrooms with choice and comfort, instructional tolerance, continuous connectivity, and assistive technology. In other words, make space for Cavendish. Make spaces for both collaboration and deep work.
One of the more interesting ideas emerging from attention capital theory is the surprising role environment can play in supporting elite cognitive performance.
Professional writers seem to be at the cutting edge of this experimentation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the near future, we start to see more serious attention paid to constructing seriously deep spaces as our economy shifts towards increasingly demanding knowledge work.
Simon Winchester’s Writing Barn – Study Hacks – Cal Newport
At our learning space, we provide caves, campfires, and watering holes so that dandelionsAccording to empirical studies and recent theories, people differ substantially in their reactivity or sensitivity to environmental influences with some being generally more affected than others. More sensitive individuals have… More, tulips, and orchids alike can find respite. Online and offline, we provide individual spaces as well as community
What I have always been hoping to accomplish is the creation of community.Community is magic. Community is power. Community is resistance.Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century https://www.amazon.com/Disability-Visibility-First-Person-Stories-Twenty-First-ebook/dp/B082ZQBL98/ https://www.amazon.com/Disability-Visibility-Adapted-Young-Adults-ebook/dp/B08VFT4R9T/… More spaces so that learners can progressively socialize according to their interaction capacity. Caves, campfires, and watering holesFuturist David Thornburg identifies three archetypal learning spaces— the campfire, cave, and watering hole—that schools can use as physical spaces and virtual spaces for student and adult learning (bit.ly/YvRuWC)Australia’s Campfires,… More are necessary to designing for neurological pluralism and providing psychological safety. They’re necessary to positive niche construction.
Make space for Cavendish.
Like Cavendish, we’re autisticAutistic ways of being are human neurological variants that can not be understood without the social model of disability.If you are wondering whether you are Autistic, spend time amongst Autistic people, online and offline. If… More. We relate to much of his personal life. He needed his bubble, his cave, his sensory and social cocoon.


He also needed, occasionally, the company of a small set of his Royal Society peers. The Royal Society Monday Club was his campfire, his place where he could lurk at the edgesFor me this space of radical openness is a margin a profound edge. Locating oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a “safe” place. One is always at… More and socialize with a small group on his terms.
The source of this apparent shyness was social anxiety so intense that it nearly immobilized him in certain situations.
It is not true, however, that he wanted to remove himself entirely from the company of his peers; he just wanted to stand off to the side, soaking everything in. Two scientists conversing on a topic of interest at the Royal Society’s Monday Club might notice a hunched figure in a gray-green coat lurking in the shadows, listening intently. Eager to solicit his appraisal of their work, his fellow natural philosophers devised a devious but effective method of drawing him into an exchange. “The way to talk to Cavendish is never to look at him,” said astronomer Francis Wollaston, “but to talk as it were into a vacancy, and then it is not unlikely but you may set him going.”
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Learn about Cavendish’s neurodivergentNeurodivergent, sometimes abbreviated as ND, means having a mind that functions in ways which diverge significantly from the dominant societal standards of “normal.”NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS Neurodivergent is quite… More traits in our glossary.
Cavendish was very uncomfortable in the public eye. He formed an alliance with Charles Blagden, an extroverted and outgoing Monday Club peer, whereby Blagden introduced Cavendish and his ideas to wider audiences. Blagden brought Cavendish to the creative commons, to the watering holes of science and naturalism. Cavendish needed intermittent collaboration.

Intermittent Collaboration
Groups whose members interacted only intermittently preserved the best of both worlds, rather than succumbing to the worst. These groups had an average quality of solution that was nearly identical to those groups that interacted constantly, yet they preserved enough variation to find some of the best solutions, too.
Problem-solving techniques take on new twist: For best solutions, intermittent collaboration provides the right formula
Our cave, campfire, and watering hole moods map to the red, yellow, and green of interaction badges (aka color communication badges). The three-level and three-speed communication flow used at Automattic and other distributed companies reflects the progressive sociality of cave, campfire, and watering hole contexts and red, yellow, green interaction moods. All of these facilitate intermittent collaboration, psychological safety, and sensory safety.
The best solutions come from “intermittent collaboration” — group work punctuated by breaks to think & work by ourselves.
Daniel Pink
Niche Construction
When we operate within a space over which we feel ownership—a space that feels like it’s ours—a host of psychological and even physiological changes ensues. These effects were first observed in studies of a phenomenon known as the “home advantage”: the consistent finding that athletes tend to win more and bigger victories when they are playing
There is nothing more human than play. Humans were designed to learn in play. In fact, nearly all mammals evolved this way.Play’s Power At our learning space, we provide learners fresh… More in their own fields, courts, and stadiums. On their home turf, teams play more aggressively, and their members (both male and female) exhibit higher levels of testosterone, a hormone associated with the expression of social dominance.
But the home advantage is not limited to sports. Researchers have identified a more general effect as well: when people occupy spaces that they consider their own, they experience themselves as more confident and capable. They are more efficient and productive. They are more focused and less distractible. And they advance their own interests more forcefully and effectively. A study by psychologists Graham Brown and Markus Baer, for example, found that people who engage in negotiation within the bounds of their own space claim between 60 and 160 percent more value than the “visiting” party.
Benjamin Meagher, an assistant professor of psychology at Kenyon College in Ohio, has advanced an intriguing theory that may explain these outcomes. The way we act, the way we think, and even the way we perceive the world around us differ when we’re in a space that’s familiar to us—one that we have shaped through our own choices and imbued with our own memories of learning and working there in the past. When we’re on our home turf, Meagher has found, our mental and perceptual processes operate more efficiently, with less need for effortful self-control. The mind works better because it doesn’t do all the work on its own; it gets an assist from the structure embedded in its environment, structure that marshals useful information, supports effective habits and routines, and restrains unproductive impulses. In a familiar space over which we feel ownership, he suggests, “our cognition is distributed across the entire setting.” The place itself helps us think.
The Extended Mind – Annie Murphy Paul
Perhaps the most important form of control over one’s space is authority over who comes in and out—a point missed by those who believe that our workspaces should resemble a bustling coffeehouse. The informal exchanges facilitated by proximity are indeed generative. But the value of such interactions can be extracted only if it is also possible, when necessary, to avoid interacting at all.
The Extended Mind – Annie Murphy Paul
Neurological Pluralism
We must build for the psychological, social, and sensory safety of neurodivergent people.
- Caves, Campfires, Watering Holes
- Dandelions, Tulips, Orchids
- Red, Yellow, Green
- Conversation, Discussion, Publication
- Realtime, Async, Storage
These reductions are a useful starting place when designing for neurological pluralismANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer… More. When we design for pluralismPluralism refers to people of diverse and conflicting beliefs coexisting peaceably, linked by their adherence to a shared social contract which commits members of different groups to treating others fairly… More, we design for real life, for the actuality of humanity.
Make space for Cavendish.
Further reading,