Abstract
This paper illustrates an outreach project that explores participatory making between students of Universal design and young adults with neurodivergence, who are being trained in life-skills by a host organization. Here, making refers to the exploration of tangible materials, media and crafting techniques and is used as a methodology for being an intuitive and democratic form of expression known to mankind. Art-craft workshops were co-imagined by the design educator (me), design students and special educators of the host organization to uncover the creative diversity amongst these atypical individuals. The workshops led to a first-hand understanding of neurodivergences, helped identify comfort levels with materials/techniques and gauge skill sets. The creative outputs were analyzed to create skill-maps for every participant. The above study was then used to design an aesthetic vocabulary-repository that celebrates the atypical sensibilities, which were used to design products that the skill-training organization could produce-retail to create a viable business. By questioning what constitutes creativity, aesthetics and authorship, we were able to alter the brand perception of enterprises working with people with disabilities thereby shifting the gaze from charity-driven to being design-driven, making it an inclusive livelihood opportunity for a community that is conventionally unable to be self-reliant. It gave the prospective designers a scope to expand their practice to accommodate vulnerabilities-differences and to imagine alternate, unrestrained narratives of aesthetics. This ability to unpack, critically question and respond to a social phenomenon was scaffolded by an experiential creative pedagogy, which was developed to be collaborative, compassionate, infusive and inclusive.
Author Information
Tulip Sinha, National Institute of Design, India
Paper Information
Conference: BCE2024
Stream: Education & Difference: Gifted Education
This paper is part of the BCE2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Sinha T. (2025) Inclusive Making: Learning to Design With and for Neurodivergence Through Participatory Making ISSN: 2435-9467 – The Barcelona Conference on Education 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 845-859) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-9467.2024.73
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-9467.2024.73
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