MAKING TIME
TIME: 10am - 12noon Monday mornings (30 mins saying what we’re doing, 1hr of doing stuff, half an hour to chat / share)
FREQUENCY: Every week until further notice
WHERE: Zoom link, the same every week
WHAT IS IT / WHO IS IT FOR
Making Time is a virtual group for neurodivergent artists, writers and researchers in performance / visual arts. If you/your work falls slightly outside of these parameters but you feel like it’s for you then it’s for you, and you do not have to have any kind of diagnosis to join.
We wanted to set something up to help us get started with things we need to or want to do when we technically could be doing them at any time, and because we want to bring a bunch of neurodivergent artists and researchers together and hear about what each other are up to!
HOW IT WORKS
The aim is to get together virtually once a week so we can do a thing together apart. It’s not a support group but it is supportive. This is also not about peer pressuring ourselves into being productive (although you are of course very welcome to get stuff done!) but about knowing that for this period of time, you are going to be doing a thing, or a couple of things, and so are a bunch of other people, and it has a start point and an end point and you’ve made a low key commitment! There will never be any pressure to share anything you’ve made / done / thought about if you don’t feel like it. Grace and Jo will be setting up the virtual space and keeping an eye on the time, but we’re not the boss of you. Every quarter we’ll invite a guest who might run a workshop / a different kind of session.
Some things we might do:
writing
reading
editing film
doing benefits admin
making things with our hands
thinking while staring out the window
The setup is that there is a zoom meeting with the same link every time (10am on a Monday), once everyone is there everyone is invited to briefly tell the group what they want to work on that day, and then we go do our own thing - you can have your camera on or off while we work, or leave the call if you’d prefer. After an hour, we come back, we’ll ask everyone how it went and if anyone wants to share anything, and if we have time we can respond to what was shared, or if we have a question or need help with something we can ask if anyone has any advice!
WHO WE ARE
Jo Hauge is a neurodivergent live artist and phd student doing a practice based phd about neurodivergent performance practice at Northumbria. They are based in Glasgow and are currently making work about fandom/figure skating/pleasure.
Grace Denton is an artist and writer with ADHD, she is also doing a practice based phd at Northumbria. She lives in Newcastle and her work involves video, text, performance and craft, and focuses on the language of sovereignty and self-governance.
HOW TO JOIN
If you’re interested in coming along, please email jo.hauge@northumbria.ac.uk or grace.e.m.denton@northumbria.ac.uk and we’ll send you the zoom details. It’s free to join, and you can attend as often or as irregularly as you like.
If you have any access requirements, please let us know in your email and we can follow these up ASAP.