Diverge: Neurodiversity and Making Symposium

Diverge is a symposium that seeks to explore neurodivergent material interaction, sensory modalities and making experience. To unpack and interrogate the structures, systems and rationale by which neurodivergent makers creatively engage with material throughout higher art education and into professional practice. How do these systems enable or disable us throughout that journey and how could we subvert dysfunctional or exclusive practices that do not support all students and restructure them to form new inclusive paradigms.

This symposium brings together craftspeople, artists, educators, designers and researchers with neurodivergent lived experience, at a time when art and design education is in critical flux, to question the functionality of the structures we exist in and consider new ways of engaging. Centred around the maker’s voice, the symposium aims to unpack the subject of neurodiversity and art practice; through interactive talks, panel discussions, multisensory experiences and installations, workshops and published material.