For some time now, a key
feature of this blog has been where I work – the campus of Roehampton
University. This is because the first set of resources I have developed – see the
previous postings to this blog from later 2017 and down to the end of February
2018 – have been concerned with a specific feature of the campus, the
eighteenth-century chimneypiece panel showing the Choice of Hercules in the
Adam Room in Grove House. This is because my thinking for some time now –
thinking which keeps being reinforced – is that this artefact has much
potential for use with autistic children.
And this week the campus is
in the news – in the Times Higher. This
is thanks to this article about a project that was developed several years ago at a time when with classical reception increasingly finding a place in the curriculum
at Roehampton, my colleagues Sonya Nevin (the left of myself and Katerina Volioti in the photo below - taken in front of Hercules) and Charlotte Behr embarked on a
project leading to the development of an undergraduate module tapping into the potential
of using the campus as a learning resource, to help students develop a new perspective
on what it is to study history and also to engage in public engagement activities
that take their discoveries to new audiences. The piece in the Higher is in turn responding to this recent article on the project, authored by Sonya and Charlotte.
In this posting I am going
to make a few reflections on some of the ways in which my autism and classical
myth project has been informed – indeed helped – by the Roehampton Campus
Project. Then I’m going to mention another thing that happened this week, and which is again informing my autism and myth work, namely an event
I attended on public engagement and Classics.
The experiences I have had
in relation to the Campus Project have informed my own work in a range of respects –
not least in helping me to see the value of engaging with artefacts in their
historical and cultural contexts. And what I am doing with my first set of resources
is – like the Campus Project as conveyed in the Higher Headline – seeking ‘to turn surroundings into study material,’
the difference being that the material in question is not – currently – pitched
at getting students to think differently about cultural artefacts and history
and heritage – but at younger people, and specifically autistic younger people.
Another thing that happened
this week is as follows. I participated in a workshop on public engagement at
the Institute of Classical Studies in London. Here a group of classicists
gathered together to share projects and ideas. Some of those who took part have
been developing projects over several years, while others came along to share
projects that are very much under development, or that haven’t been fully
germinated yet. Mine fell somewhere in between. I have put together a draft of
a set of resources aimed at taking classics to a particular audience – an audience
that matches one of the themes that was discussed several times at the event,
namely how to identify and reach ‘invisible publics.’ But I have not yet stared
on the actual public engagement. So, it was an timely event for me, where I could try
out ideas, and to learn from - and be inspired by – fellow participants.
In a subsequent posting I shall say more about the event and set out some of the things that I took away from it which can inform the
next stage in my work – where I begin sharing my resources with those who might
become users of it. This will include a milestone moment for me – in May of
this year in Warsaw, when I participate in a café run by autistic people.
More soon!
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