Webinar review: Neurodiversity and accessibility in the arts

While Creative Youth's work targets young people aged 5 to 26, their recent webinar examining neurodiversity and accessibility would be of use to the entire profession and certainly isn't age–bound. Those watching from this target group can take much needed knowledge from the webinar to support change to the industry as–is, rather than simply responding to current trends.

In the past five years, there has been an acceleration in research into how to best support artists in the creative arts. This has included Petronilla Whitfield's excellent work on teaching Shakespeare to students with neurodiversity and dyslexia, as well as her recent text on inclusive practices in performance training. Daron Oram's work has examined approaches to actor training with concrete techniques for teachers when working with students with dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism. Their work aligns with this panel's suggestions of techniques, such as writing down instructions and questions, ‘chunking’, the use of shorter five–minute breaks, and for directors and teachers not to talk in metaphors or overly use hints or subtext.