Neurodivergence & Creative Arts

Friends of the Furture Collective Director, Georgia Cooper, explores some of her thoughts around Neurodivergence & Creative Arts.

All of us here at Friends of the Future have experience of working with neurodivergent brains, and we are driven by a desire to explore the untapped power and possibilities of neurodiverse cognition and processing.

None more so than me… Although I did well in primary school, once I got to Secondary School things became less easy. If only I had known then, why all the words moved up and down on the pages of the books I was reading, and why it was almost impossible for me to sit still, get to sleep at night, or not to shout out in class.

I studied art because it seemed to be the place where my way of seeing the world was valued, and, a bonus; no writing, no exams, and no sitting still!

Dyslexia and ADHD diagnoses didn’t come until later in life for me, bringing with them a certain sadness for that child who was constantly in trouble and was told she was lazy. The one who walked into doors, couldn’t remember where she had left her coat and who despite trying really, really hard, was always late. I still do all those things, and I get on my own nerves most days but I also know: I am not lazy and I never was.

Many years later, as a newly qualified therapist working at The Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds, I noticed how many of our amazingly talented and creative dancers had differently wired brains, many of them having arrived with diagnoses. The dyslexia tutor, Ros Lehany, and I started to meet regularly and began to realise that about 25% of our student had some kind of information processing difference …. or neurodiversity as it came to be known. In the general population this is about 10%.

Being a Centre of Excellence in the Arts, was a privilege that came with extra funding, and we were able support our students well, in very specific and relevant ways. We began to screen all our students for dyslexia and ADHD as they arrived. And over the years since increased awareness that 25% has risen slightly, to 30 % but remained fairly stable. Perhaps nudging up more recently, so now a third of all our students and staff identify has having some form of neurodiverse processing.

Since those conversations in the early 2000’s, I have always wondered which comes first...

• Do we train in creative areas because that is all that us open to us, and it is where we are encouraged to go, being often less good at traditional academic work?

• Or… does the creative thinking and discipline of an arts training appeal to and suit diverse brains better?

• Do those of us with ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia find our way into subject areas where we feel valued for what we can bring? i.e. thinking outside the box, seeing the world differently, being unable to sit still, and having 100 ideas all at the same time.

Friends of the Future are currently looking to find funding that will enable some non academic, lived experience, creative research, into the connections between different cognitive processing and making or doing art, music and movement.