Context of Practice : Petcha Kutcha

Slides, in order of presentation.

1. Introduction, how i got onto the subject and how it turned into 'How illustrators raise awareness for autism'.

2. The book that inspired me and got me interested in the first place. What it taught me initially - Art is a way for autistic people to express how they feel, or its an escape/release.

3. What is autism? A neurological difference. Neural systems tied to gaging social cues appear over-connected in children with the disorder.

4. Why is awareness of the disorder so important? The rise in numbers over the last 30 odd years of people being diagnosed is so great.

5. Why illustrators to raise awareness? Because autism is a global disorder and art is a universal language.

6. The illustrations I looked at during my essay and how they focused on the negative aspects. Isolation, communication difficulties etc.

7. How my work started to reflect these problems. Very beginning of developing ideas.

8. After reading an autistic persons point of view on eye contact my ideas changed and I decided to focus my work on a more positive side.

9. It was explained that if they make eye contact they often focus on your face and all the things on your face rather than the words you're saying. So for them not to make eye contact actually makes sense and who are we to say its wrong?

10. At the end of the day we are all different. No two people are the same and we need to start accepting our differences, rather than focusing on all the things that we think are wrong with each other. Need to start focusing on the good things.

11. Take Jake Barnett for example, 16 year old with a master in theoretical physics. He says that 'He's happy to be autistic"

12. Hw was part of a forty day project that ran up to autism awareness day. Autistic people were asked to send in paintings or blog posts and it was an opportunity for them to have a voice and to be heard.

13.Things like this give autistic people the confidence to speak out in a society where they are often marginalised for their differences. This is Mikey Allcock, and he says that his autism makes things shine'

14. Great things are starting to happen all over the world. This is the chalks art festival that now takes place in America once a year and invited autistic people and their families to join together for the day, get creative and celebrate who they are.

15. Art events like these are taking place all over, this one is called 'Create - art for autism' and its an amazing way for people on the spectrum to express themselves. We need to start looking for the gifts, rather than the problems...

16. Take Stephen Wiltshire for example, one of the most renowned city scape artists today. He has the gift to look at a city scape just once, come away and then draw it, window for window.