Playing Apart online

Playing A/Part Online is an impact and public engagement initiative arising from interdisciplinary research between arts and psychology to investigate autism and gender. Through participatory community research, the original project explored the identities and experiences of autistic girls using a programme of creative workshops and mixed methods evaluation.

The researchers worked with a steering group of autistic women and marginalised genders and consulted with an advisory board. The aim of the follow on project is to enhance the value and benefits of the original research through the development of online digital resources as well as extending the demographic of participants that will be able to access the tools to engage three new neurodivergent user communities.

- Home schooled autistic children and young adults - Neurodivergent boys, young men and gender diverse young people - Autistic school populations who would work independently with the digital resources

Over 80,000 young people are now in Elective Home Education (EHE), an increase of 7% since 2020 (ACDS 2021). It is estimated that at least 10% of these young people have additional needs and are in possession of an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) (BBC 2022). This is particularly important for autistic learners, who experience a high frequency of bullying (Humphrey and Symes 2009) and for whom homeschooling during the pandemic provided a "temporary release from the challenges of everyday school life" (UCL).

Funding is sought to enable us to develop online and interactive digital resources to be appropriate for the above communities. Development and testing of the resources will need to be carried out with the new communities and adapted after user feedback. The online resources are arts-based and interactive.

They are informed by the creative methods used in the original research but take these in a new direction through collaboration with the arts technology company C&T and their development of the digital learning platform, Prospero. The project team worked with C&T during the Covid 19 pandemic, contributing to the pilot version of Prospero as a knowledge exchange activity.

This however, involved specially trained arts practitioners interacting with Prospero to deliver online workshops through Zoom. The newly developed Prospero platform (building upon these user experiences) enables individual participants (producers) to have agency as learners and creatives so that the arts-based tasks can be completed without the need for specialist practitioner support.

A training programme for families and teachers is part of the proposal informed by the peer education methods developed in the original project through collaboration with the participatory arts company Peer Productions and consultation with autistic professionals in the project's original Steering Group. This enables us to significantly extend the reach and impact of the online resources to a variety of user communities.

The funding will also support the training and recruiting of a young and diverse population of peer practitioners who will perform in and film the resources, including neurodivergent practitioners.

Additionally, the grant will support knowledge exchange through partnership with Kent County Council and the development of a neurodivergent peer mentoring programme for home-schoolers that aims to reduce social isolation and improve self-esteem, self-advocacy and well-being. By participating in the work, a network will be provided for home schoolers and their parent(s)/carer(s), and the online resources will encourage collaboration between these groups engaged with the creative work.The online resources will be available internationally to help support creative curriculums for those in school and home learners.

The training and peer mentoring programme will be tested during the grant prior to being rolled through our partnerships and networks.