Talking Together

Figment Arts worked with autistic academic Dr Gemma Williams to respond to her research into autistic communication and loneliness. We worked for around 12 months with a group of autistic artists to develop and produce some creative responses to the research. The resulting films are presented here, alongside an 'explainer' video which shows how Gemma conducted her research.

We launched the films in Blackpool at the International Resilience Conference and in Brighton at the Rose Hill. The films are presented here with two of the artists Q&A's.

Thanks to the University of Brighton and the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this project.

Working with Figment Arts and the autistic artists on these videos has been a dream project. It was important to me to ensure my research findings were genuinely accessible, as unfortunately research often isn’t. I’m a big believer of ‘nothing about us without us‘.

Dr Gemma Williams

The project was great. It was really good to collaborate on an art project using research from someone that knows so much about autism. I found that I learned a lot about autism which was useful as autistic people aren’t always educated about their condition – they are just diagnosed with it if they are lucky. Misconceptions about autistic people are often that their social skills are crap, that they have no empathy, and are rude. This can be the case – but if they are rude that’s not always because of their autism.

Eleana Re