Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium
The Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium will take place online on 15 November and in person on 22 November at University of the Arts Helsinki.
![A photograph of an art installation in a large gallery space. In the center of the image is a large black and white print hanging from the ceiling depicting two children embracing. On the left is a display of sculpted hands. On the right, a white panel leans against the wall, embossed in white text that reads “One way to look at [it] is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person”. In the foreground is a shallow pool of water that reflects the installation.](https://www.uniarts.fi/uploads/2024/02/bfcd7982-inarisandell_1_full-1200x900.jpg)
The Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium will bring together teachers, researchers, students, activists, and practitioners across the arts, whose work and/or lived experiences engage with concepts of neurodiversity and neurodivergence in relation to fields in the arts and arts education. The symposium will take place online on November 15, 2024, and onsite at the University of the Arts Helsinki on November 22, 2024. The language of the symposium is English.
Quick notes for symposium access and logistics
- Both the online and onsite sessions will be recorded to provide for greater access to attendees.
- All virtual and in-person sessions will be live-captioned by a CART specialist. All recordings of the sessions will be captioned and transcribed.
- For the November 15 online day, sessions will be scheduled to span across many global time zones to allow for the broadest synchronous participation.
- For the November 22 onsite day: This symposium is a stim-friendly event. There will be multiple quiet rooms available for attendees. The primary event room will feature multiple modes of being and moving in the space.
- For more in-depth details about access and logistics, please visit the Symposium access and presentation logistics section on this website.
Call for proposals
The call for proposals for the Neurodiversity in the Arts symposium invites proposals for both the online session on November 15 and the onsite session at the University of the Arts Helsinki on November 22.
The scope of the call for proposals comprises all art forms. This includes, but is not limited to, contexts related to the visual arts, performing arts, music, arts administration and policy, art activism and advocacy, as well as different contexts of education and pedagogy, such as primary, secondary, and higher education; artist pedagogy; curatorial and museum education; and public pedagogy.
The deadline for the call for proposals is June 15, 2024. Please review the information in this section and submit your proposal here:
While this call is open to a general theme of neurodiversity in the arts, we ask that you review the Position Statement by the Symposium Organizers located below this section. We have provided some guiding questions below for consideration when preparing proposals. Please note that it is not a requirement to address these guiding questions or the topics raised in the organizers’ position statement in your proposals:
- How can neurodiversity approaches can be put into practice in the arts and arts education?
- How can curriculum development, institutional structures, or pedagogical practices in arts education create greater equity and access for neurodivergent students?
- How can neurodiversity approaches further engage in intersectional work within and across the arts and arts education toward challenging and dismantling ableism; White supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia, ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia, heteronormativity and heterosexism?
- What alternative learning opportunities, programs, or community art centers exist for neurodivergent artists that honors their ways of knowing, moving, or communicating, and how might these strategies be applied to public education?
- How can neurodiversity approaches in the arts and arts education contribute to a broader societal change towards anti-ableist institutions, structures, practices, or discourses?
- How do artists and arts educators who specialize in neurodiversity approaches engage with questions of representation, inclusion, social justice, or equity?
Session formats
- Individual presentation: An individual presentation refers to scholarly, visual, performative, and other multimodal presentations. The suggested duration is 30 minutes including discussion.
- Panel: A panel is a proposal consisting of two or more presentations that address a related topic/idea, one outlined by the proposers. We encourage alternate formats that might include discussions among researchers, educators, leaders, and activists. The suggested duration is 60 minutes including discussion.
- Workshop: Workshops are intended to foster critical and public dialogue around particular artistic practices and engage participants with easily accessible materials. This year we encourage workshops centered around experiential learning. The suggested duration is 30-60 minutes including discussion.
- Art in Action: We value all forms of creative engagement, including investigations that happen within and outside the typical studio/stages space, such as placed-based, site-specific, and embodied arts explorations. The suggested duration is 30-60 minutes including discussion. For Art in Action proposals, you may submit a PDF (10MB max) containing images or links to media in addition to submitting an abstract.
About session formats
- We seek to organize the sessions by following a crip time approach to their duration.
- Session lengths may vary according to presenters’ access needs, the context of the presentation, and personal preference for ways of being and presenting in the session space.
- We provide suggested time frames for each session format as a general reference based on past conferences, but presenters are encouraged to propose an estimated duration of their session in the submission form.
- While breaks will be generously scheduled between all session blocks, presenters may also include time and space for pause and rest within the session without any concern or requirement to reduce the presentation content.
- This approach to the symposium scheduling will take form as an open, flexible, and engaged negotiation with the conference organizers.
- We will prioritize scheduling sessions according to presenters’ preferred duration as best as we can within the overall symposium schedule.
Proposal formats and lengths
Proposals may be submitted as written texts or as voice or video recordings. Video or audio formats are for those who prefer to submit a spoken proposal abstract rather than a written proposal abstract. The symposium session itself may take any form of expression, but for consistency of proposal evaluation, we require that all proposal abstracts are language-based (either written or spoken). Please limit recording files to 10MB.
*Word lengths and voice/video durations are suggested to offer flexibility, but we ask that proposals do not exceed these suggestions by too much (as to avoid excessive workload for evaluators).
- Individual Session and Workshop Proposals: Suggestion is 300 words or 4 minutes for recording*
- Panel Session Proposals: Suggestion is 500 words or 7 minutes for recording* including panel theme and panelist proposals.
- Art in Action Proposals: Suggestion is 300 words or 4 minutes for recording* and optional PDF (10MB max) file for media.
Please remove any identifying information in the proposal abstract. If you submit a video or recorded proposal, we will transcribe the recording to text for evaluation, to ensure that your identity will be concealed.
Position statement by symposium organisers
Emphasis on neurodiversity paradigm and neurodiversity approaches
By following a neurodiversity paradigm (Walker 2014) or neurodiversity approaches (Dwyer 2022), we position the Neurodiversity in the Arts symposium as a platform for analyzing, challenging, and transforming ableist societal attitudes and practices that stigmatize neurodivergent minds and ways of being. Medical models of pathology paradigms are often portrayed as approaching neurodivergence as a deficit, defect, or disorder that must be cured, fixed, modified, or masked to adhere to an arbitrary normative ideal. Such models of intervention that are harmful and destructive to the individual are overwhelmingly entwined and bound by ableist discourses and practices.
To counter the medical model, we advocate for socio-relational approaches toof neurodiversity. This affirms human variation and neurodivergent identity, while recognizing that such an affirmation of identity is not at odds with contextual approaches that maintain or augment the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals. As such, this symposium welcomes discussion on how neurodiversity and critical reform approaches can contribute to changing the ableist ways in which the pathology paradigm or medical model approaches neurodiversity.
[Dr. Nick Walker’s 2014/2021 essay Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms & Definitions offers greater depth of this discussion, as well as an enormous wealth of insight into the various terms associated with neurodiversity. Patrick Dwyer’s 2022 article The Neurodiversity Approach(es): What Are They and What Do They Mean for Researchers? offers an excellent discussion of the various recent neurodiversity approaches.]
Emphasis on intersectional and neuroqueer approaches
We follow Niles et al (2017) call for greater recognition that “ableism is a socially constructed complex system of disempowerment which intersects with, and is just as pervasive as, other systems of oppression”. The lived experience of neurodivergence is inherently entwined with, and compounded by oppressions of minoritized lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers. We also espouse neuroqueerness as a form of disidentification that rejects oppressive norms and medical model discourses, advocating for a more inclusive, fluid conceptualisation of identity that transcends traditional categories.
While presentations in this symposium are not required to specifically or directly address intersectionality or neuroqueerness, we eagerly encourage presentations that particularly focus on this intersectional and neuroqueer engagment across the issues of neurodiversity, arts, and arts education toward challenging and dismantling ableism; White supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia; ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia; and heteronormativity and heterosexism.
[Miles, A. L., Nishida, A., & Forber-Pratt, A. J. (2017). An open letter to White disability studies and ableist institutions of higher education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(3).]
Terminology and language
The symposium organizers recognize and support the use of terminology that aligns with one’s identity and lived experience. We acknowledge the validity of identity-first and person-first language, as well as other forms, in expressing personal preferences of disability and neurodivergent experiences.
Preliminary Registration Information
- Registration for the symposium will be open in September.
- Registration fee categories will be announced in mid-May.
- Regardless of registration fees, the organizers assure that no participants will be prevented from attending the symposium due to lack of funds.
Symposium access and presentation logistics
15 November – Online sessions
- Sessions will be scheduled to span across many global time zones to allow for the broadest synchronous participation.
- Presenters have the option to present their sessions live or as a pre-recorded video (and then live for discussion).
- Live-captioning for all presentations and discussions will be provided by a CART specialist.
- All presentations and discussions will be recorded and uploaded to the symposium video platform within 48 hours, and will be accessible to all registered attendees via a private link.
- Recorded videos available on the symposium video platform will be captioned by a CART specialist.
22 November – Onsite sessions
- In-person presenters have the option to present their sessions live or as a pre-recorded video (and then live for discussion).
- A CART specialist will provide live-captioning for all in-person presentations and discussions.
- All in-person presentations and discussions will be recorded and uploaded to the symposium video platform within 48 hours, and will be accessible to all registered attendees via a private link.
- Recorded videos available on the symposium video platform will be captioned by a CART specialist.
Access for 22 November attendees
The symposium session will be held in the White Studio at Uniarts Helsinki. There will be various options available and encouraged for attendees to be fluidly situated within the space, including conventional seating, plush-padded chairs, bean bag chairs, floor mats, and space for movement.
The symposium will be a stim (physical and verbal) friendly space. Attendees are welcome to sit, stand, lay down, move around, and leave (and return to) the space at any point during the symposium.
There will be a larger quiet room available for attendees located near the White Studio. This space has low lighting and offers furniture for various modes of sitting, resting, and being in the space. Disposable ear plugs, over-the-ear noise-blocking headphones, and a selection of stim toys will be available for attendees to use in all of the symposium spaces.
There will be two private quiet booths available for attendees to use throughout the symposium. Each booth provides low-light spaces containing sound-proofing headphones.
Support and organising committee
The Neurodiversity in the Arts symposium is generously funded and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki, and is affiliated with the International Disability Studies, Arts & Education (iDSAE) Network. It builds upon the themes of the previous iDSAE conferences hosted in 2017, 2019, and 2021.
The organising committee
- Timothy Smith (committee chair) / Research Institute, University of the Arts Helsinki
- Alexandra Allen / SUNY Buffalo State, USA
- jt Eisenhauer Richardson / The Ohio State University, USA
- Liisa Jaakonaho / Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki
- Mira Kallio-Tavin / University of Georgia, USA
- Fran Trento / University of Helsinki
- Alice Wexler / Professor Emerita, SUNY New Paltz, USA
- Johanna Rauhaniemi (coordinator) / University of the Arts Helsinki
Contact for inquiries
For questions or comments about the Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium, please contact: neuroarts@uniarts.fi
The Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium will bring together teachers, researchers, students, activists, and practitioners across the arts, whose work and/or lived experiences engage with concepts of neurodiversity and neurodivergence in relation to fields in the arts and arts education. The symposium will take place online on November 15, 2024, and onsite at the University of the Arts Helsinki on November 22, 2024. The language of the symposium is English.
Quick notes for symposium access and logistics
- Both the online and onsite sessions will be recorded to provide for greater access to attendees.
- All virtual and in-person sessions will be live-captioned by a CART specialist. All recordings of the sessions will be captioned and transcribed.
- For the November 15 online day, sessions will be scheduled to span across many global time zones to allow for the broadest synchronous participation.
- For the November 22 onsite day: This symposium is a stim-friendly event. There will be multiple quiet rooms available for attendees. The primary event room will feature multiple modes of being and moving in the space.
- For more in-depth details about access and logistics, please visit the Symposium access and presentation logistics section on this website.
Call for proposals
The call for proposals for the Neurodiversity in the Arts symposium invites proposals for both the online session on November 15 and the onsite session at the University of the Arts Helsinki on November 22.
The scope of the call for proposals comprises all art forms. This includes, but is not limited to, contexts related to the visual arts, performing arts, music, arts administration and policy, art activism and advocacy, as well as different contexts of education and pedagogy, such as primary, secondary, and higher education; artist pedagogy; curatorial and museum education; and public pedagogy.
The deadline for the call for proposals is June 15, 2024. Please review the information in this section and submit your proposal here:
While this call is open to a general theme of neurodiversity in the arts, we ask that you review the Position Statement by the Symposium Organizers located below this section. We have provided some guiding questions below for consideration when preparing proposals. Please note that it is not a requirement to address these guiding questions or the topics raised in the organizers’ position statement in your proposals:
- How can neurodiversity approaches can be put into practice in the arts and arts education?
- How can curriculum development, institutional structures, or pedagogical practices in arts education create greater equity and access for neurodivergent students?
- How can neurodiversity approaches further engage in intersectional work within and across the arts and arts education toward challenging and dismantling ableism; White supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia, ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia, heteronormativity and heterosexism?
- What alternative learning opportunities, programs, or community art centers exist for neurodivergent artists that honors their ways of knowing, moving, or communicating, and how might these strategies be applied to public education?
- How can neurodiversity approaches in the arts and arts education contribute to a broader societal change towards anti-ableist institutions, structures, practices, or discourses?
- How do artists and arts educators who specialize in neurodiversity approaches engage with questions of representation, inclusion, social justice, or equity?
Session formats
- Individual presentation: An individual presentation refers to scholarly, visual, performative, and other multimodal presentations. The suggested duration is 30 minutes including discussion.
- Panel: A panel is a proposal consisting of two or more presentations that address a related topic/idea, one outlined by the proposers. We encourage alternate formats that might include discussions among researchers, educators, leaders, and activists. The suggested duration is 60 minutes including discussion.
- Workshop: Workshops are intended to foster critical and public dialogue around particular artistic practices and engage participants with easily accessible materials. This year we encourage workshops centered around experiential learning. The suggested duration is 30-60 minutes including discussion.
- Art in Action: We value all forms of creative engagement, including investigations that happen within and outside the typical studio/stages space, such as placed-based, site-specific, and embodied arts explorations. The suggested duration is 30-60 minutes including discussion. For Art in Action proposals, you may submit a PDF (10MB max) containing images or links to media in addition to submitting an abstract.
About session formats
- We seek to organize the sessions by following a crip time approach to their duration.
- Session lengths may vary according to presenters’ access needs, the context of the presentation, and personal preference for ways of being and presenting in the session space.
- We provide suggested time frames for each session format as a general reference based on past conferences, but presenters are encouraged to propose an estimated duration of their session in the submission form.
- While breaks will be generously scheduled between all session blocks, presenters may also include time and space for pause and rest within the session without any concern or requirement to reduce the presentation content.
- This approach to the symposium scheduling will take form as an open, flexible, and engaged negotiation with the conference organizers.
- We will prioritize scheduling sessions according to presenters’ preferred duration as best as we can within the overall symposium schedule.
Proposal formats and lengths
Proposals may be submitted as written texts or as voice or video recordings. Video or audio formats are for those who prefer to submit a spoken proposal abstract rather than a written proposal abstract. The symposium session itself may take any form of expression, but for consistency of proposal evaluation, we require that all proposal abstracts are language-based (either written or spoken). Please limit recording files to 10MB.
*Word lengths and voice/video durations are suggested to offer flexibility, but we ask that proposals do not exceed these suggestions by too much (as to avoid excessive workload for evaluators).
- Individual Session and Workshop Proposals: Suggestion is 300 words or 4 minutes for recording*
- Panel Session Proposals: Suggestion is 500 words or 7 minutes for recording* including panel theme and panelist proposals.
- Art in Action Proposals: Suggestion is 300 words or 4 minutes for recording* and optional PDF (10MB max) file for media.
Please remove any identifying information in the proposal abstract. If you submit a video or recorded proposal, we will transcribe the recording to text for evaluation, to ensure that your identity will be concealed.
Position statement by symposium organisers
Emphasis on neurodiversity paradigm and neurodiversity approaches
By following a neurodiversity paradigm (Walker 2014) or neurodiversity approaches (Dwyer 2022), we position the Neurodiversity in the Arts symposium as a platform for analyzing, challenging, and transforming ableist societal attitudes and practices that stigmatize neurodivergent minds and ways of being. Medical models of pathology paradigms are often portrayed as approaching neurodivergence as a deficit, defect, or disorder that must be cured, fixed, modified, or masked to adhere to an arbitrary normative ideal. Such models of intervention that are harmful and destructive to the individual are overwhelmingly entwined and bound by ableist discourses and practices.
To counter the medical model, we advocate for socio-relational approaches toof neurodiversity. This affirms human variation and neurodivergent identity, while recognizing that such an affirmation of identity is not at odds with contextual approaches that maintain or augment the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals. As such, this symposium welcomes discussion on how neurodiversity and critical reform approaches can contribute to changing the ableist ways in which the pathology paradigm or medical model approaches neurodiversity.
[Dr. Nick Walker’s 2014/2021 essay Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms & Definitions offers greater depth of this discussion, as well as an enormous wealth of insight into the various terms associated with neurodiversity. Patrick Dwyer’s 2022 article The Neurodiversity Approach(es): What Are They and What Do They Mean for Researchers? offers an excellent discussion of the various recent neurodiversity approaches.]
Emphasis on intersectional and neuroqueer approaches
We follow Niles et al (2017) call for greater recognition that “ableism is a socially constructed complex system of disempowerment which intersects with, and is just as pervasive as, other systems of oppression”. The lived experience of neurodivergence is inherently entwined with, and compounded by oppressions of minoritized lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers. We also espouse neuroqueerness as a form of disidentification that rejects oppressive norms and medical model discourses, advocating for a more inclusive, fluid conceptualisation of identity that transcends traditional categories.
While presentations in this symposium are not required to specifically or directly address intersectionality or neuroqueerness, we eagerly encourage presentations that particularly focus on this intersectional and neuroqueer engagment across the issues of neurodiversity, arts, and arts education toward challenging and dismantling ableism; White supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia; ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia; and heteronormativity and heterosexism.
[Miles, A. L., Nishida, A., & Forber-Pratt, A. J. (2017). An open letter to White disability studies and ableist institutions of higher education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(3).]
Terminology and language
The symposium organizers recognize and support the use of terminology that aligns with one’s identity and lived experience. We acknowledge the validity of identity-first and person-first language, as well as other forms, in expressing personal preferences of disability and neurodivergent experiences.
Preliminary Registration Information
- Registration for the symposium will be open in September.
- Registration fee categories will be announced in mid-May.
- Regardless of registration fees, the organizers assure that no participants will be prevented from attending the symposium due to lack of funds.
Symposium access and presentation logistics
15 November – Online sessions
- Sessions will be scheduled to span across many global time zones to allow for the broadest synchronous participation.
- Presenters have the option to present their sessions live or as a pre-recorded video (and then live for discussion).
- Live-captioning for all presentations and discussions will be provided by a CART specialist.
- All presentations and discussions will be recorded and uploaded to the symposium video platform within 48 hours, and will be accessible to all registered attendees via a private link.
- Recorded videos available on the symposium video platform will be captioned by a CART specialist.
22 November – Onsite sessions
- In-person presenters have the option to present their sessions live or as a pre-recorded video (and then live for discussion).
- A CART specialist will provide live-captioning for all in-person presentations and discussions.
- All in-person presentations and discussions will be recorded and uploaded to the symposium video platform within 48 hours, and will be accessible to all registered attendees via a private link.
- Recorded videos available on the symposium video platform will be captioned by a CART specialist.
Access for 22 November attendees
The symposium session will be held in the White Studio at Uniarts Helsinki. There will be various options available and encouraged for attendees to be fluidly situated within the space, including conventional seating, plush-padded chairs, bean bag chairs, floor mats, and space for movement.
The symposium will be a stim (physical and verbal) friendly space. Attendees are welcome to sit, stand, lay down, move around, and leave (and return to) the space at any point during the symposium.
There will be a larger quiet room available for attendees located near the White Studio. This space has low lighting and offers furniture for various modes of sitting, resting, and being in the space. Disposable ear plugs, over-the-ear noise-blocking headphones, and a selection of stim toys will be available for attendees to use in all of the symposium spaces.
There will be two private quiet booths available for attendees to use throughout the symposium. Each booth provides low-light spaces containing sound-proofing headphones.
Support and organising committee
The Neurodiversity in the Arts symposium is generously funded and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki, and is affiliated with the International Disability Studies, Arts & Education (iDSAE) Network. It builds upon the themes of the previous iDSAE conferences hosted in 2017, 2019, and 2021.
The organising committee
- Timothy Smith (committee chair) / Research Institute, University of the Arts Helsinki
- Alexandra Allen / SUNY Buffalo State, USA
- jt Eisenhauer Richardson / The Ohio State University, USA
- Liisa Jaakonaho / Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki
- Mira Kallio-Tavin / University of Georgia, USA
- Fran Trento / University of Helsinki
- Alice Wexler / Professor Emerita, SUNY New Paltz, USA
- Johanna Rauhaniemi (coordinator) / University of the Arts Helsinki
Contact for inquiries
For questions or comments about the Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium, please contact: neuroarts@uniarts.fi