At Margate Pride, upon Saturday the 10th of August, after MixMatched joined the March championing Neuroqueer identities, we hosted a workshop upon claiming authentic voice….
This Creative Writing Workshop celebrated Authentic self-expression! Stemming from co-founder Emma Robdale’s PHD research upon Neurodivergent+ Culture Studies within Creative Writing and Performance it explored and challenged how elements of Language/formalized language forces us to speak and write in specific ways… and how we can challenge that! are we all masking our own voice? – Introducing concepts such as ableism within language structure, and ‘neuroqueering’ (the act of using/recognising your ND/LGBTQIA+ identity and allowing it to inform your worldview and potentially artistic practice), this workshop took participants through a range of creative writing activities, encourages participants to break boundaries and discover new writing methods.
During the quite personal workshop, participants were encouraged to open up about factors impacting their identity and asked if they had experienced being ‘censored’ in their expression/language/writing. They were presented with a number of ‘atypical’ style narrations, one being Elinor McBride’s, ‘A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’, and were encouraged to challenge not only the logistics of how they write, but also the form – many of the end products incorporated pictures, doodles, colour, LARGE ANGRY LETTERS, and could be seen both as an artwork and a piece of writing. They also wrote letters to their younger selves and wrote in steam of consciousness narrations to attempt to ‘get in touche’ with their voice/intrinsic way of writing/thinking and get it to translate onto a page.
By hosting the workshop I was able to connect more deeply with a group of Neurodivergent+ and Neuroqueer individuals, and further my own investment into the topic. As all participants identified as Neurodivergent+, I think that this created a ‘neurodivergent norm’, and I felt as if participants were really open and we were able to channel that into ‘group brain’ creativity. 😀