{"id":647,"date":"2014-10-20T15:07:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T15:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/?p=647"},"modified":"2014-10-20T15:07:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T15:07:42","slug":"imagining-autism-and-surprising-knowledges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/2014\/10\/20\/imagining-autism-and-surprising-knowledges\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Imagining Autism and Surprising Knowledges\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melissa Trimingham, Senior Lecturer in Drama at The University of Kent will be giving a talk at St Andrew’s University on Wednesday 22nd October about the Imagining Autism Project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Imagining Autism and Surprising Knowledges\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u2018fundamental premise\u2019 of \u2018Knowing from the Inside\u2019 is that \u2018knowledge grows from our practical and observational engagement with beings and things around us. Knowledge, we contend, comes from thinking with, from and through beings and things, not just about them.\u2019 http:\/\/www.abdn.ac.uk\/research\/kfi\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) funded project \u2018Imagining Autism\u2019<\/a> at the University of Kent, similarly approached autism from the \u2018inside\u2019. We pioneered new approaches to communicating with autistic children, using drama and theatre.\u00a0 The sessions take place within the \u2018pod\u2019, a portable tent like structure, and in this \u2018playground\u2019 very severely autistic children with no\u00a0 speech or apparent communication at all, develop their imagination, emotion and empathy. In the \u2018scenes\u2019 offered- Forest, Arctic, Outer Space, Underwater and Under City, the children (in groups of 4, aged 7-11) meet puppets, \u00a0masked and costumed characters, and enjoy varied sounds, texture and projections.\u00a0 The very loose story can be altered or\u00a0 cut or\u00a0 extended depending on how the children join in, but it\u2019s important to realize that linear narrative unfolding is not important, but iterative process is. Children are free to play, experiencing \u2018engagement with beings and things\u2019 around them, which is very rare for them. The result is surprising gain in \u2018knowledges\u2019- for them and us.<\/p>\n

As a practitioner, researcher,\u00a0 maker and\u00a0 designer of the project, I want to share some of the more extraordinary moments of the project and from that draw out some ideas about how meaning is never always dependent on words. Instead, as in this project, communication draws richly on unnoticed wells of meaning in our environment- the fluidity of space for example, and on objects imbued by familiarity, handling and use.<\/p>\n

Knowing from the \u00a0Inside<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.abdn.ac.uk\/research\/kfi\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Knowing From the Inside\u2019 is about the practices of inquiry in the human sciences and the forms of knowledge to which they give rise. Its fundamental premise is that knowledge grows from our practical and observational engagement with beings and things around us. Knowledge, we contend, comes from thinking with, from and through beings and things, not just about them. Our aim is to show how research underpinned by this premise could make a difference to the sustainability of environmental relations and to the well-being that depends on it.<\/p>\n

The project is funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant held by Professor Tim Ingold<\/a>.\u00a0 It includes five sub-projects that explore the fields of landscape management, craft heritage, environmental conservation, building and restoration, and drawing and notation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa Trimingham, Senior Lecturer in Drama at The University of Kent will be giving a talk at St Andrew’s University on Wednesday 22nd October about … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39610,"featured_media":648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50018],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/arts-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}