Autism and Classical Myth: Turning the campus into a learning opportunity for autistic children

Why classical myth and autism?

Why classical myth and autism?

The idea for this project started to take shape at a meeting in 2008 with a special needs teacher, who mentioned that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often enjoy classical myth. I began to wonder why this might be the case, and whether – as a classicist who researches, and loves, classical myth – there was anything I could contribute. I started this blog to report on my progress which was often sporadic until the launch of the Warsaw-based European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-22) to trace the role of classics in children’s culture.

My key contribution to the project is an exploration of classics in autistic children’s culture, above all by producing myth-themed activities for autistic children. This blog shares my progress, often along Herculean paths, including to a book of lessons for autistic children focusing on the Choice of Hercules between two very different paths in life. The image above, illustrating the homepage of this blog, is one of the drawings by Steve K. Simons, the book's illustrator, of a chimneypiece panel in a neoclassical villa at Roehampton in South West London. The lessons centre on this panel.

Saturday, 24 March 2018

Turning the campus into a learning opportunity for autistic children

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!