neuro diversity

The Unique Dyslexic Project is about creativity and dyslexia. Its about providing a forum or a hub where people can share the fruits of their creative talents in a friendly and supportive environment.

When I talk of creativity I am talking across a whole range of different activities including: 

comedy, music/song writing, innovation, entrepreneurial activity, story telling/writing, film making, animation, art, IT, poetry, engineering, cooking, problem solving, leadership, sports, dance, architecture, academic innovation, meaningful education....

If you are creative and dyslexic and want to share what you do and meet with others like yourself then get involved in the Unique Dyslexic Project.

Lets get together a create a coherent dyslexic community. One challenges the old negative view of dyslexia created by dyslexia and medical specialists to a much more positive social model of dyslexia that celebrates what we are.

But its also about promoting a more positive profile of dyslexia to the dyslexic and non-dyslexic world. A profile that takes the old medical deficit model of dyslexia and throws it in the rubbish bin of history where it belongs.

We promote a social model of dyslexia which tells us that dyslexia is a difference that reflects the neuro diversity that exists within the human race as a whole.

"We would argue that dyslexia is an experience that arises out of natural human diversity on the one hand and a world on the other where the early learning of literacy, and good personal organisation and working memory is mistakenly used as a marker of ‘intelligence’. The problem here is seeing difference incorrectly as ‘deficit’.

 

Put in practical terms, for example, it is disabling to expect that everyone:

• thinks in the same way as each other, when dyslexic people are more likely to think visually than verbally (or laterally than logically, or intuitively than deductively….)
• learns to read in the same way; reading is about accessing meaning, the rest is merely strategy and there is always more than one way to learn anything.
• makes sense of information in the same way (they don’t, which is why multi-sensory information is easier for everyone to understand).
• can take in multiple instructions.
• can learn to take notes while trying to listen.

Many of us who have been made to feel ‘stupid’ by these disabling experiences have adopted ‘dyslexia’ and ‘dyslexic’ as terms of empowerment that confront the deficit model, challenge disabling expectations and requirements, and promotes the many strengths associated with dyslexia such as visual thinking, entrepreneurial skills, vision, creativity, lateral thinking, as well as hands-on and artistic skills."

 

Ross Cooper