by Kai Syng Tan
This is an abridged version of an article ‘What’s love got to do with neurodiversity and HE art and design?’ published on 29/11/2024 on the Society for Research into Higher Education blog. Sign up here to participate in the CHEAD Leadership Programme taster ‘What’s love got to do with leadership?’ led by Kai as a new CHEAD Trustee on 18/12/2024. The session features a response by Pascal Matthias, Co-Founder of FACE (Fashion Academics Creating Equality). Kai is Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership, University of Southampton. All views here are their own.
In a sector and society that seems devoid of love, how to curate a love-led symposium?
Dr Timothy Smith (image 2, to the left) shows a way, through their Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium. The symposium took two years of advocacy and planning, and draws on several more of research across neurodiversity and art education. It took place at the University of the Arts Helsinki, modelling best practices for inclusivity, not just for neurodivergent folx. Universities, watch and learn. Let’s spell out a few ways how:
- Programming not to neo-liberalist but ‘crip time’ (Kafer 2013), enabling us to process our thoughts, with 30 minute breaks between sessions, and a 2-hour lunch break;
- Employment of live professional CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning – not the still racist AI captioning that does not grasp ‘non-standard’ accents (image 2, to the right);
- Where divergent modes of being – including horizontally, in motion etc, not just seated or erect – are affirmed (image 2, foreground);
- Inclusion of fidget toys in the goody bag (image 3);
- Provision of quiet spaces – no, we’re not talking about a broom cupboard or first aid room doubling, but a (care-)fully decked out sensory rooms for group or solo use, with low lighting, different soft furnishings as well as more sensory objects for people to shut off, calm down and/or regroup (image 4);
- Detailed maps, diagrams and instructions for ‘walking or wheeling’ to venues; including for a dinner, at a five-star hotel, which was a delicious vegan spread – and entirely free of charge;
- Priced at less than one-third the fee of a usual conference at €100 – and that’s for ‘participants receiving full institutional financial support’; otherwise, ‘please select the €0 fee option’;
- Elevating and celebrating diverse body-minds-worlds whose research, creative and professional practice gather, collide and transcend disciplines, fields of knowledge, cultures, geopolitical borders, and specialisms and in the lineup. This includes shy*play, a pedagogical platform, collective, and art practice comprising teacher-researchers from Netherlands-Spain Antje Nestel and Aion Arribas, who invite us to ‘do neurodiversity’ (images 5a-5b); Estonian-UK PhD candidate Iris Sirendi discussing their Curating for Change curatorial fellowship at the Museum of Liverpool and urging – no, daring – the arts and cultural sector to step up and ‘crip the museum’ (image 6); US-Canadian-Polish feminist researcher and author of several books including Asexual Erotics Professor Ela Przybylo disclosing their new identity/positionality of being autistic, and inviting responses Towards a Neuroqueer Conference Manifesto/a/x.
The above are just a few of the highlights from the in-person session on 22 November 2024, which complements an online symposium with a different programme a week prior on 15 November 2024 for those who prefer the digital interface, both of which are recorded with transcripts which all participants can freely access.
I’m not singing the praises of the Symposium because I was the keynote speaker. My performance-lecture was entitled ‘Neuro-Futurism and Reimagining Leadership’. My performance-lecture was based on my book of the same title, subtitled ‘An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation’.
I’m saying the above as I’ve been a keynote and participant in more than 100 conferences – and I’m still allergic to them, not least as someone who is hyperactive and literally cannot sit still. I’m also saying this as someone who’s curated several, including one on running as an arts and humanities discourse that a 2014 Guardian article said ‘other conferences could take a leaf out of’, for its 8-minute sprint formats and multi-modal approaches including film screening, meditation sessions and run-chats.
But Tim’s conference was way better. The symposium is prioritising not just neurodivergent and queer – neuroqueer (Walker 2021) – perspectives. Following the positionality of multiply-minoritised researchers in higher education Angel L. Miles, Akemi Nishida and Anjali J. Forber-Pratt at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Vanderbilt University as expressed in their powerful open letter to White disability studies and ableist institutions of higher education (2017), the symposium focuses on research that counter ‘white supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia; ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia; and heteronormativity and heterosexism’.
I’m seeking to curate a summit in 2026 that brings these principles to life. The 3-day international summit re-imagines HE art and design as a change-making and future-making force through neuroqueer, social justice and leadership prisms. It welcomes anyone with a stake in the arts and culture, higher education, social change and inclusive futures, to get together to explore the coexistence of different ways to (un-)learning and being in the world, to share best practices about inclusion, and to collectivise and co-create action plans for more inclusive futures within and beyond the art school and HE. Through quickfire provocations, transdisciplinary speed-dating, reverse-mentoring, co-creation of toolkits, skateboarding tours, running-discourses and other embodied forms of engagement, we will not just learn about ways to make ‘reasonable’ adjustments for neurodivergent students and staff, but to learn about their innovative approaches, and thus re-imagine ways to understand and do ‘leadership’, so as to make positive changes, within and beyond art and design and HE. This shift in paradigm to position art and design higher education is aligned with – and can amplify – other ongoing efforts in the sector, such as the Creative Education Manifesto. Get in touch if you’re keen to help do the work.
Clearly, neither Tim’s symposium or my proposed summit are the only or last word in this matter. You, too, can curate with love. After all, the term ‘curate’relates with care and hospitality. And I’m sure that Tim, like me, wants other HE programmes to come, to even better ours.
So, take our baton. Run with it.
Photographs by Kai. Photograph of Kai by neurodivergent artist-curator-activist-PhD-candidate Aidan Moseby