https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8987-6209
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ABSTRACT
This paper presents and analyzes six short first-person films produced through a collaborative multimedia storytelling workshop series focused on experiences of autism, education and inclusion. The aim of the project is to co-create new understandings of autism beyond functionalist and biomedical ones that reify autism as a problem of disordered brains and underpin special education. We fashion a body becoming disability studies in education approach to proliferate stories of autism outside received cultural scripts – autism as biomedical disorder, brain-based difference, otherworldliness, lost or stolen child and more. Our approach keeps the meaning of autism moving, always emerging, resisting, fading away and becoming again in relation to context, time, space, material oppressions, cultural scripts, intersecting differences, surprising bodies and interpretative engagement. We argue that the films we present and analyse not only significantly change and critique traditional special education approaches based on assumptions of the normative human as non-autistic, they also enact ‘autism’ as a becoming process and relation with implications for inclusive educators. By this we mean that the stories shift what autism might be and become, and open space for a proliferation of representations and practices of difference in and beyond educational contexts that support flourishing for all.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, under Grant 430-2016-00050 and 950-231091. We wish to acknowledge the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph for cultivating and supporting our exploration of collaborative and sensorial storytelling methods, and the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University who generously donated accessible workshop space. We also recognise the workshop facilitators and artists who collaborated on this project – Erin MacIndoe Sproule, Elizabeth Jackson, Andrea LaMarre, Ingrid Mundel, Sara Wilde, Michelle Peek, Georgia Simms, Liz Brockest, Elizabeth Harrison, Bridget Liang, Anthony Easton and Adam Wolfond as well as the artist storytellers who participated in our workshops.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Patty Douglas is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University. She researches and teaches in disability studies, critical autism studies and critical approaches to mothering and care using arts-informed, interpretive, post-structuralist and post-humanist approaches. Douglas works with teachers, educators, families and disabled persons to challenge stereotypes and reimagine systems beyond exclusion and deficit perceptions. More information can be found at: www.enactingautisminclusion.ca. @DougladPatricia
Carla Rice is Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Guelph specialising in embodiment studies and in arts-based and creative methodologies. She founded Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice as an arts-informed research centre with a mandate to foster inclusive communities, social well-being, equity, and justice. Rice has received awards for research and mentorship, and has written on embodied difference, non-normative cultures, and accessibility and inclusion. More information about the Re•Vision Centre can be found at: https://projectrevision.ca/.
Katherine Runswick-Cole is Professor of Education in the School of Education at The University of Sheffield, UK. She locates her work in the field of critical disability studies and the associated fields of disabled children's childhood studies and critical autism studies. @k_runswick_cole
Anthony Easton is a writer and artist now living in Hamilton, Ontario. They have published in the Atlantic, Spin, the Globe and Mail, and others. Their work has been shown in Chicago, New York, Edmonton, Toronto, and is in the collection of the library of the National Gallery of Canada.
Margaret F. (Meg) Gibson is an Assistant Professor at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. Her published scholarship crosses disability studies, social work, history, and sexuality studies, focusing on encounters between service providers, service users, and institutions. She edited Queering Motherhood: Narrative and Theoretical Perspectives (Demeter Press, 2014).
Julia Gruson-Wood is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Guelph and recently completed her doctorate in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her dissertation is a critical ethnographic study of the culture and social organisation of the everyday work of behaviour therapy providers in Ontario, Canada.
Estée Klar is completing her PhD at York University in Critical Disability Studies. She is the founder and executive director of The Autism Acceptance Project (TAAP), one of the first international initiatives promoting autism acceptance. With her autistic non-speaking son Adam, who types to communicate, she is also co-founder of The A School Collective in Toronto, a learning community creating supportive conditions for neurodiverse contributions to emerge. Klar has worked as a curator of art in Canada and Europe including works by autistic artists. She and her son co-publish and create exhibitions together on autistic movement and the importance of inter-relational support to shift notions of agency and independence. For more information: http://www.taaproject.com/
Raya Shields is a Masters student in Critical Disability Studies at York University researching the manipulation of space and time in institutional settings. She is autistic, queer, and multiply neurodivergent. In her spare time, Raya enjoys visiting and documenting Toronto's many laundromats, playing tabletop role playing games, and re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with her pug, Sir Gherkin.
Notes
1 The stories presented in our paper can be viewed online. Go to https://projectrevision.ca/restorying-autism. Type in the password ‘restorying’. Please note: the videos are intended for readers only and are not for public screening.
2 All videos were produced in compliance with Canadian copyright guidelines including the non-commercial user generated content exception. This research has received university ethics approval.