Abstract
The Neurodiversity journal launched in 2023 and, as with any launch, there has been a ton of work behind the scenes to get us to this exciting point. From the original proposal brought to us by two extraordinary Irish academics and practitioners, Blánaid Gavin and Etain Quigley, back in 2021, to the website from which you are reading this article today.
One of the prelaunch tasks is to design a cover. There is an excellent team of designers at Sage who would usually undertake this job. But we wanted to do things differently for this journal. While not exactly ripping up the rulebook on journal launches, we did bend a few of its pages. Diversity is central to the journal's ethos, and after discussions with the Head of Design, Jen Crisp, we decided to set up a competition for neurodivergent artists and designers to create a design that would act as an inspiration for the Neurodiversity cover.
People did not have to be professional artists to submit their designs. The only criteria being that the individual had to self-identify as neurodivergent.
The competition opened its doors on September 4, 2022 and the deadline for submissions was a month later. A prize of £500 was offered to the winner. The panel of judges included Charlotte Valeur, Founder of the Institute of Neurodiversity, Dr Punit Shah and Professor Joni Holmes, co-editors of Neurodiversity, Jen Crisp, head of design at Sage, and Kerry Barner, publisher at Sage.
We did not know what to expect and the results were extraordinary, not only in the diversity of designs themselves but in the eloquent stories behind many of the images. One theme represented “traversing set milestones in life, never quite fitting in, until one day you realise you don’t need to fit in to be able to thrive,” Claire Hoskins, author.
Another contributor uses “AAC, sign language and sometimes unreliable vocal speech to communicate, fights for disability rights and attends college to study to become a teacher to disabled students and also teach non-disabled individuals.”
Another artist used walnuts and pecans as images to depict the human brain. The ink used was fountain pen ink (a special interest of the artist) and the syringe used to transport the ink from the bottle to the walnut was a syringe the artist used for crisis medication after an incident. The artist went on to say, “So here you have both sides of Life with Autism: the beauty of indulging in something one enjoys and the heartache of not being able to keep up with the people around you, not achieving the same things while wanting to and feeling pressured to.”
Another designer wrote: “I usually express myself by making little creatures and characters, so I made some cute and diverse ‘brainlings’ to show that just like the rest of our bodies, our brains can be very different and that's ok! The background includes the word ‘neurodiversity’ in many fonts to further show this idea. I also included red, gold, and rainbows as an homage to autism and neurodiversity-positive movements. I drew an infinity symbol orbiting two rainbows, both as an inclusion of the infinity symbol for neurodiversity, and to illustrate the concept of connecting people, ideas, and support through accessible resources.”
One design was submitted by the mother of a neurodivergent daughter. It was a brain with flowers—the brown flowers her daughter picked years ago and dried. Imagine that!
Each design was as unique as its contributor. But we had to choose a design, and this was not an easy task. As you can tell from the above stories, the pictures painted a thousand and one words, but I will leave it to Cathy Martin to explain in her own words how she came to design the winning image.
First, I need to say how pleased I was (and still am) that my entry was chosen, thank you.
Like some of the contributors, the beginnings of the image arose out of what might be a duality for many Neurodivergent people—light and shadow—shadowed in not being able to live life as others do but finding illumination, meaning, and great joy in passionate pursuits.
Following a series of catastrophic events that coincided with a formal but late Autistic identification, I had to quit my paid work knowing that the consequences would be dire, and they have been. This occurred in tandem with developing a deeper understanding of autism and therefore myself.
After quitting work, I’d been worried about falling into despair and was also looking for advice online on how to deal with burnout. Overwhelmingly, the suggestions were time in nature, stimming, engaging in passions, and withdrawal to a darkened space. I did all of these and also reconnected with a daily meditative practice.
Ultimately, engaging in passions was taking photographs. I have a long-standing interest in the ephemeral and fleeting, in reflection and shadow, and, as a collector of too many things I began arranging and photographing some of these things in sunlit forms that eventually became a low-tech, asymmetrical kaleidoscope of sorts.
During this time, reading about the Sage Publishing competition, I turned my focus and evolving kaleidoscope to thoughts of Neurodiversity which I approached as a three-dimensional imaginal space, a neuroverse.
In the neuroverse, a turn of the human kaleidoscope produces infinite diversity.
It is catalysed in tiny fractions of a second in the way that flickering shards of sunlight illuminate new renditions of the same things with each foray through the atmosphere. Thoughts, moments, movements, sensations coalescing, colliding, coinciding—words which together suggest precarity and chaos but form structures in which to imagine or reimagine yourself and your self, as well as reference to the kaleidoscopic—symmetrical or otherwise—compelling, colourful, crystalline, markers of Neurodiversity.
We hope you enjoy Cathy's striking image and the process of how it came about. We also hope you enjoy the collage of other designers who entered the competition and shared their creative vision of Neurodiversity with us.
Top row left to right: Mike Clark, Emma Marsh, Jacqueline Khoo Kay Ling, Lilly Thompson. Second row from top: Claire Hoskins, Nicola Radford, Myrn Fisher, Keshav Jhawar. Third row from top: Alma Wennekers, Si Hodgson, Ben Usher-Barass, Besa Shemovski Thomas. Bottom row: Beth Sutton, Ra Vashtar, Diana Simon.
