Autism and Classical Myth: More deep play with Hercules

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.

Friday 17 May 2019

More deep play with Hercules - next week in Warsaw

Tomorrow I am off to Warsaw for a week of workshops and conference events linked with the Our Mythical Childhood project. This is going to include two workshops where I present the activities I am creating based on the experiences of Hercules.

At these workshops, I shall show how I have refined the activities since last year, when I also ran a workshop on the Choice of Hercules. Like last year, the participants will have an opportunity, if they want, to have a go at doing one of the activities.

For this activity, I shall be presenting the high-quality vector drawings created specially by the project by Steve Simons. These replace the very provisional drawings which I used last year: if drawing is even the right word – they were created on my PC’s word-processing package by manipulating a photograph of the artefact on which they activities are based…

These earlier drawings – I’ll keep with the word for convenience – still managed to produce some awesomely creative work. With the new drawings, I am hoping that the scope for participants to engage with the scene will only been enhanced.

For now, and in memory of this time last year, this posting is illustrated with some of the products of the May 2018 workshop, which took place at Life is Cool, a café in Warsaw run by autistic people. This is where the first of the workshops will take place, on Tuesday of next week. I am very much looking forward to my return visit! The reference to 'deep play' is taken from annotations to the drawing produced by last year's participants.

One final thing - the conference will open with various introductory talks including one labelled on the programme: "Our Mythical Surprise". This surprise is of an autistic nature. Watch this space - I'm anticipating sharing this surprise in my next posting...