On a rainy day in February, a crowd gathered at Science Gallery London for a special art exhibition. The artworks on display were a result of collaborations between artists and scientists, who approached their work from a unique perspective: neurodivergence. While the scientists were studying this topic, the artists were living it. Despite their different backgrounds, the NEUROART exhibition aimed to bridge the gap between these worlds by bringing lived experiences into the biomedical research space and amplifying neurodivergent voices in the field of neuroscience. The pairs had the opportunity to learn from each other’s expertise and experience, resulting in thought-provoking art pieces that explored themes emerging from their interactions. To learn more about this innovative project, I spoke to my colleague Bethan Burnside, founder of NEUROART and current Science Communicator at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research.
Hi Bethan, you’re the founder of NEUROART. What made you start this project?
Burnside \ “It was 2022, and I was in the thick of my PhD in Biomedical Sciences in Antwerp. Doing a PhD was challenging in itself, but especially since I was navigating a fresh diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This came as a bit of a surprise. For ages—despite having a background in psychology and neuroscience—I was convinced only young boys got diagnosed with ADHD. It really threw a spanner in the works in regard to my identity and how I perceived myself. The pandemic gave me time to delve into the online neurodivergent space and get to know its culture, language, and community. The more I delved into it, the more I felt a gap between my neurodivergent reality and the research world I was living in. There was often a dichotomy of language and approach whereby research tended to follow the “medical model” of neurodiversity—viewing experiences such as autism and ADHD as things to be prevented, treated, or cured—as opposed to the “social model”, which argues that disability partly arises from societal barriers to inclusion. This dissonance became the seed for NEUROART, with the aim of fostering a dialogue and exploring how we might begin to reconcile some of these different perspectives.”
コメント