Project Background

Creative Expression and Public Engagement

In spring 2024, I was project lead on a University of Exeter Public Engagement Springboard funded project that worked with home-educated neurodivergent young people across Devon and Cornwall to create visual representations of what being neurodivergent meant to them. The resultant artworks and their accompanying narratives were curated into an online and physical art exhibition which highlighted the emotional impact on the artists of the difference between the way they saw themselves and the way they felt others saw them. At the exhibition launch for the education community in June 2024 we received feedback from senior education leaders that work like this was needed to boost children’s self-esteem which was often damaged by school experiences.

This doctoral project supports neurodivergent creative self-expression and purposefully engages with the experiences of those neurodivergent learners less frequently ‘seen’ in research.

Find out more about Identity Boxes and the idea behind them

Find out more about Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of assemblage