Autism and Classical Myth: What I'll be doing during World Autism Awareness Week

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.

Monday, 1 April 2019

What I'll be doing during World Autism Awareness Week - Day 1

Hercules' mountain - by Steve Simons

It’s currently World Autism Awareness Week 2019. To mark the Week - which begins today, neatly, on a Monday - I am going to do something that I have not managed for over a year. I’m going to to post to this blog over successive days. I’m aiming to post every day during the Week: April 1-7. I last managed postings over several days at the end of February 2018 when I was presenting a first set of activities for autistic children that I had been developing.

Some people who see this posting, including those based beyond the UK, might wonder what I mean by an autism ‘Week’ – as opposed to World Autism Day, which is an established world-wide event held on each April 2^nd. This could be because, although ‘world’ is the title I am pretty sure that World Autism Awareness Week is an initiative in the UK – from the National Autistic Society It feels right, and timely, to be engaging with a UK initiative, and one that, while growing out of the UK – if I’m right – is looking beyond Britain.

On the one hand, to date, my work has been UK-focused. For instance, I have been doing a pilot study of the activities with primary school children at the autism unit of a school in London. I’ve also consulted with UK-based academics and practitioners specialising in autism.

On the other hand, what I am doing is not confined to the UK. Since I started blogging on the topic I have enjoyed correspondence from beyond the UK, particularly in the US, from where the most hits to this blog have consistently come. What’s more, I am producing the activities as part of the global Our Mythical Childhood project, headquartered in Poland, and I first presented my activities in a café in Warsaw run by autistic people.

The postings I write this week will, likewise, have both a UK and a global focus. For example, I shall report on something that happened close to home, when I ran a session relating to the project with Classical Civilisation students at Roehampton.

I shall also be reporting on the things that I’m doing this week, both of which have an international dimension. Firstly, later in the week, I’ll be meeting with Dr Lisa Maurice who will be over in the UK from Bar-Ilan University, to discuss the initiatives she and her colleagues are developing to support autistic children in Israel.

Secondly, on Saturday I shall be part of a panel on classics and disability at the CAMWS (Classical Association of the Middle West and South) conference in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. My paper will discuss my autism project. As soon as I press ‘publish’ for this current posting, I am going to put the final touches to my paper for Lincoln. Once it’s been delivered, I’ll share it here – to mark the culmination of this week.

During the Week, I'm also going to share some of the artwork created by Steve Simons for the first set of activities. Today's image, at the top this posting, marks Day 1, as I contemplate how I'll present my work between now and Sunday. It's Steve's drawing of the mountain to be climbed should Hercules choose the path offered by one of the two mysterious women he meets as he deliberates where to go next in life.

Till tomorrow...