I’ve been working with young people for the past 3.5 years at VIBE in Rochdale – a youth charity centred around helping boost confidence by encouraging creativity, and have just released a film about it – The Power of Creativity.
School wasn’t the best place for me. Had a dyslexic diagnosis a few years ago that went some way to explain why…
Lots of our members showed neurodiverse traits… there is so much that society doesn’t understand about neurodiversity, so much so, the word ‘neurodiversity’ has a red dotted line underneath it as I type, prompting me to correct it.
This sums up the hardships people face with a mind that sees the world differently. We’re not recognised and then told to try harder, when we’re already working 10 times harder, which often leads to simply giving up.
Working with these young people, I found that just a simple nudge of encouragement went a long way.
To be fair, you’d need 10x PHDs to fully understand neurodiversity… it’s an emerging field of research, full of nuance. However, well worth reading into if you want to understand people all around you and maybe even yourself. The Skills Network offer this free qualification: Understanding Autism.
Although we didn’t focus on lables, we were more conserned that the young people were happy to be themselves.
As I explain in the film, one of my favourite activities was to ask the young people to help find solutions to practical creative issues we came up against because one of the positives of having a mind that thinks differently, is that this sort of mind will often come up with creative solutions that others don’t see.
Hoping to pick up all that I’ve learnt from this experience, and start something new…
#dyslexia #adhd #autisum
Please check out the film, and if it speaks to you, feel free to get in contact.
Harry Wheeler 