Drop The Mask
Come and join us and create collages, poetry and spoken word to express your lived experience of neurodivergence, whether or not you are diagnosed as neurodivergent, we want to engage with people of all ages and backgrounds across Coventry and Warwickshire.
We want to engage with loved ones, colleagues, friends and family members also.
Join us at Words and Voices - for our third creative workshop! Here you can enjoy our growing exhibition and help create more artworks for the exhibition itself and/or something to take home.
If you create a spoken word piece during one of our workshops, we will be inviting people to share their pieces at the end of the day programme around 3.30pm.
Please join us - the more of us there are the less scary it is (we think anyway). Help us create a performance, on the day!
So Drop the Mask, Drop the Mic. Together.
Proposed Programme (please note this will be slightly adjusted depending on numbers in the room and core team member availability)
Flexible Programme
FAB room 1.05 (accessible by stairs or lift) Image of the space Link opens in a new window
Drop in arts and crafts activities, mask-making, collage, drawing and poetry creation. With examples, provocations and facilitators from the Drop the Mask core team.
We are not 'artists' per se, we do not create art to generate income, but we do create it to process our emotions and experiences in relation to being and/or loving someone who is neurodivergent. At the moment, in the main, our core team have lived experience of autism and/or ADHD, and/or love/care for someone with autism and/or ADHD.
We are seeking to include people from across the ND spectrum.
12.00pm - 12.45pm - Due to team availability we will still be setting up - but we will do our very best!
12.45pm - 1.30pm - Drop in Sessions
1.30pm - 1.50pm - Hear from members of the core project team about the project, the creation of the exhibition, workshops so far and hopes and dreams for the project. The team also speak candidly about their own lived experience of neurodivergence as they discuss their artistic creations that have been part of the initial seed exhibition.
You can still be in the room making art - dropping in
2.00pm - 2.30pm - If we have enough team members present then we will hold a relaxed, in conversation discussion with the team talking about the project and their own lived experiences, as part of a conversation with audience members.
You can still be in the room making art - dropping in
2.30pm - 3.30pm - Drop in Sessions
3.30pm - 4.00pm - POTENTIALLY....at the main stage, we will welcome anyone who has either created on the day (finished, or not!) or has bought with them - a spoken word piece, poem, reflection - no longer than about 2 minutes long to share it with us. If you would like, we capture this footage and your voice and piece can become part of the exhibition, it will also be loaded to our webpages - with your express consent and final approval of the footage.
What is the Drop the Mask Project?
Drop the Mask: Neurodivergence, Identity, Creativity and Empathy (DM-NICE)
Drop the Mask is an inter and transdisciplinary community that brings together internal and external stakeholders via innovative and unexpected methods.
We want to co-produce participatory research and co-create artistic pieces, workshops and events to explore and further understand, share and celebrate the lived experience of neurodivergent individuals within and beyond the University of Warwick and Coventry area
What are we doing?
1) Furthering knowledge and understanding of neurodiversity, working with those with experience of neurodivergence.
2) Creating a local community of neurodivergent individuals and allies to support health and wellbeing of members and those that are impacted.
3) Aiming to influence internal and external policies and strategies, ensuing that there is ‘nothing about us without us’ and that ND communities are truly consulted and collaborated with, being both heard and seen.
Who can get involved?
We also recognise that ND people masking/unmasking impacts the loved ones and carers of ND people and we invite those who love and support a ND individual to join us.
We realise that neurotypical people mask at times also, we all do, we all need to 'fit in' at different times. It's the extent to which this happens, the frequency, depth and breadth.
People living in Coventry and Warwickshire, are welcomed to join us and Drop the Mask. The easiest way to do so is to contribute to our growing, co-created, crowd-sourced arts exhibition!
You do not have to have formal diagnosis, or believe yourself to be ND in order to join in.