A wonderful video from The Mighty.
A excellent video from the folks at The Mighty on stimming…
As this first appeared on facebook and not all my followers use facebook I am keeping comments open even though this is not my own work.
An account of a visit to London for an NAS training session, including Sutcliffe’s Laws of Travelling by Public Transport and lots of photographs.
This post deals with events on Saturday, when I attended a training session for branch officers at NAS HQ in London. Before moving on to the main part of my post I have a small section on…
April is Autism Awareness month, and here in West Norfolk we certainly did our part, with our hugely successful Positive Autism Awareness Conference. However it is also important to make it quite clear that autism does not stop at the end of April. Improving awareness, understanding and ultimately acceptance of autism is a year-round task.
I have never previously set these out in full, so here goes:
Zeroth law: Any journey involving public transport requires careful planning no matter how apparently straightforward it is.
First law: If you allow scope for things to go wrong you will have a quick, clear run.
Second law: If you decline to allow scope for things to go wrong you will have a horror run.
Third law: Because bitter experience has taught them to make allowances public transport users are less likely to arrive late than car users.
Do you recognize the more famous set of laws on which the formatting of this set is based?
The session was due to start at 10AM, which gave two options for which train to catch – the 7:54 and be tight for time or the 6:54 and have time to spare for things to go wrong. In keeping with the first law of travelling by public transport the second option was chosen. The other person travelling from West Norfolk wanted to travel there with me, so we agreed to take the 6:54. On the day preceding the journey I called in at the station to make sure that the service was running as it should be (The branch chair had kindly arranged tickets for us, requiring in return that we make sure to come back with expenses claim forms so that she could reclaim the money). Here are some pictures from this preliminary stage…
We took our places on the train and having allowed for things to go wrong had a clear run to London. Callum’s girlfriend had decided to travel with us so she could have a look round London, and at King’s Cross she and Callum arranged a meeting point before Callum and I head off towards NAS HQ.
Walking up Pentonville Road (between Pentonville Road, Angel and our London starting point of King’s Cross this was quite a monopoly board journey!) we arrived at NAS HQ almost dot on 9 o’clock, and were the only people there that early. I took some pictures while we waited for others to arrive, including the feature image…
Alessia, one of the two people running the session arrived a few minutes after we had, and let us in to the building. We took our places in the training room, and examined our training packs…
The training session consisted of presentations and some group activities. I found it to be a very valuable day, definitely worth the early start. The bit I enjoyed most came near the end, when we had to decide whether certain scenarios were things we could do as NAS volunteers, things we could not do or things that we might be able to do. At the end of the session Callum and I went our separate ways, he to meet his girlfriend and I to head back (albeit by a somewhat circuitous route). The pictures I took between here and the concourse at King’s Cross station will be featuring on my
London transport themed website, so I shall not share them here.
Apart from providing a few good photos, the return journey was pretty uneventful (yes, on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend I had two public transport journeys pass without incident), and I arrived back home just over 11 hours after setting off in the morning.
An account of the Positive Autism Awareness Conference staged by NAS West Norfolk yesterday at the Duke’s Head Hotel, King’s Lynn. Read, enjoy and please share.
Yesterday NAS West Norfolk held a Positive Autism Awareness Conference at the Duke’s Head Hotel in King’s Lynn, and this post,which will be a major one is all about that event.
Some us went to the venue on Thursday evening to do a some preliminary setup work to reduce the amount that needed to be done on the day itself. Here are a few photos from that…
Those of use involved in organizing the event were required to be there by 8AM so that we were ready when the guests started arriving. I arrived bright and early (given that the venue is a five minute walk from my flat so I jolly well should have done!), and got my stall up and running. Here are some photos from before the event started…
Indefatigable branch chair Karan McKerrow opened the event and explained that the day was about being positive about autism and autistic people, mentioning both myself and Callum and what we were going to be doing during the day. Then it was time for Lynda Niles’ talk. At that stage we were operating without amplification, and I was stood at the back, but I still heard every word that Lynda said. Lynda’s talk was accompanied by slides, which show you what she covered…
One of the things we had at this event was a ‘dark den’ with a beanbag inside as the floor was quite hard. The den itself survived unscathed, but the beanbag was a different story…
Callum Brazzo, the other of two autistic adults to be on the committee of NAS West Norfolk, recited a poem he had created about autism as the next feature of the conference. I am unable to remember the exact words, but it was a splendid performance, and I sure that if you email Callum he can supply the words (perhaps you could post them in the comments section as well, Callum). Meanwhile, here he is in action…
Clinical psychologist Dr Mel Bruce and a commissioner named Sharon shared the next session, but before I move on to that, Mel has learned some excellent rules for making sessions autism friendly, and here they are…
We had a working microphone by this point, which Mel and Sharon shared, taking it in turns to speak. They introduced the ‘bucket model’ for anxiety of which much more later, talked about their respective jobs and about quite a few other things.
Karan had organised food for us, which turned out to be excellent, and thus fortified we were ready for the afternoon session, which opened with the undoubted star speaker of the event…
Anna had arrived during lunch and expressed her admiration for my photos. Anna talked about her experiences bringing up two autistic children, going on People’s Strictly (partnered with Robin Windsor) and launching Autism’s Got Talent (and successfully facing down Mr Cowell over that suffix!). Her talk was thoroughly inspiring.
Anna’s talk was followed by a short break, during which I took this picture…
The last session of the day was another joint effort, by Holly and Michelle,two of Mel’s colleagues at Starfish Plus. Their presentation went into more detail about the ‘bucket model’, and was an excellent way to bring down the curtain on the event…
My photographic stall was very successful. The event itself was a massive success. Not counting us committee members 145 people packed out the venue, every session was interesting and informative and the stalls were all fantastic.
A follow up to my Autism Awareness post, combined with some new photographs.
The first part of my title refers to the fact that as well as birds I have a bee and some butterflies among my camera captures for the day, while the second refers to the fact that today is Autism Awareness Day and gives a nod in this direction.
I have some infographics spotted on the internet to share with you and a few links including an important petition. I will start with the petition, launched on change.org by my friend and fellow NAS West Norfolk committee member Callum Brazzo calling for greater representation of non-verbal autistics on TV and in Employment. Please follow this link to sign and share the petition, and let’s build it big!
My next link is to a splendid article posted on indepedent.co.uk which tallies very closely with my own views on autism.
Now to a link and an infographic. The link is to the website of the wonderful Anna Kennedy OBE (who will be at our Positive Autism Awareness Conference on April 15th) and the infographic is her Autism Awareness infographic:
Another link and infographic pairing, this time to the National Autistic Society’s TMI campaign, raising awareness of sensory issues:
The bright light at the south-eastern corner of The Wash is me putting myself on this map.
My remaining infographics come without links, and I present them in pairs, first these two general ones:
I finish this section with two warning infographics for our American friends about an organisation who are widely condemned in the autistic community:
In reverse alphabetical order, I start with some butterfly pictures…
Now we have the bee (yay!)…
Now for the rest of my pictures, which mainly feature the other B I mentioned, birds…
This is a post created for Autism Awareness Day. Read, enjoy and please share.
Today is Autism Awareness day. Therefore there will be a lot about autism, some from autistic people, some from autism advocates etc. This is my first offering of the day, and I shall start with…
Of course, since I have written about all these things before many of my readers already know a good deal of this. Autism is lifelong, but not always diagnosed as early as it should be (indeed there are still problems in my part of the world with people waiting literally years for a diagnosis). Thus although I am a forty year old autistic person my timeline spans less than ten of those years…
While increasing autism awareness is a laudable goal, it is insufficient. In an attempt to help explaining my view of where autism awareness fits I have produced a mini flow-chart to which I will append some words of explanation:
In the UK at least, not many people are actually completely unaware of autism, although their understanding of it and what it means is often limited (sadly in some cases deliberately so). Acceptance, which is the next stage up from understanding is something that far fewer have managed. Inclusion is the final goal, and by inclusion I mean full acceptance of the autistic person complete with foibles, tics, stims et al.
Something that autistic people are well-known for is having special interests. The word obsession with its negative connotations should be avoided in this context. My own special interests include photography, public transport (see www.londontu.be for more on this) and cricket (watching brief only – I never had any aptitude as a player).
Well done all of you have made to this stage, as a reward here are some pictures which between them relate to two of my listed special interests.
aspiblog 