We are hosting an upcoming Neuroqueer Zine Workshop at Goldsmiths this October, and invite any students, researchers, and others who might be interested in participating.

The in-person workshops will be held in two sessions on the last two Fridays in October:

• 17 October, taking place in Special Collections & Archives, Goldsmiths Library
• Second date TBC shortly and is planned as an online workshop to allow broader participation and accessibility

What’s it about?

The workshop invites queer and neurodivergent participants to explore the intersection of queerness and neurodivergence - what has been called neuroqueerness, to describe "the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously" (Walker, 2021) - through the medium of zine-making. Zines have long been a tool for community-building, political resistance, and radical creativity, especially within queer and disabled communities. Drawing from this tradition, our workshop will be a space for sharing experiences, expressing neuroqueer modes of being, and creating collaboratively.

Who is it for?

This is a space specifically for those who identify as both queer and neurodivergent (broadly defined) – whether students, early career researchers, or others interested in the intersectional neuroqueer experience. No prior zine experience is required!

The session will include:

• An intro to zine-making and its political roots
• Icebreakers and collaborative prompts
• A relaxed, access-conscious creative space
• All materials provided (including examples)
• An opportunity to create your own zines

More on the Workshop Theme: 

Despite often being studied in isolation from each other, Queerness, Transness, and neurodivergence are inherently linked, with more neurodivergent people identifying as LGBTQ+ than not (Weir et al, 2021).Neurodiversity and Queerness are two topics at the margins of academic discourse. Individually, these issues are starting to be explored more and more but the intersection of neurodivergence and queerness – neuroqueerness, is often not the explicit focus. 'Neuroqueer' as a term is used to describe "the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously" (Walker, 2021). Rather than seeing neurodivergence as a medicalized or fixed identity, neuroqueering invites a politics and practice of misalignment, of actively deviating from normative expectations around cognition, behaviour, and embodiment. We want to explore how experiences of neuroqueerness are shaped by both interlinking aspects of identity and mode of experience in the world. What does it mean to think, feel, and relate to the world otherwise (Haraway)?

To that end, we want to organize two creative zine making workshops – one in person at Goldsmiths and one online that will be accessible to a wider range of participants. Through collaboratively creating these workshops, we hope to open up a space for exploration of what neuroqueerness can mean in practice and how neurodivergent experience reconfigures social norms and sensory environments. Historically, Zines have been used as an instrument for the oppressed to create representation and visibility, preserve a community’s history, and create community (Feminist MAF(I)A, 2009). Particularly, Zines are important tools for preserving and documenting Queer history and creating Queer community. The zines we invite people that identify as neurodivergent and queer to create are not endpoints but windows into possibilities of exploring this intersection. This openness is intentional to allow us to attend to possibilities emerging from collaboration, follow unplanned paths and what feels good and safe to all participants. This approach is informed by CRIT studies and queer and disabled ethnographies.

Neurodivergent communities are often seen as having their own distinct culture in how they relate to and contrast mainstream neurotypical culture, carving out their own worlds within hostile realities (Fein, 2015). Deemed a “Queer Survival skill”, reimagining hostile systems and creating new spaces and worlds is a form of resistance often practised by Queer communities (Kawitzky, 2021). Following authors like Yergeau (2018), neuroqueerness is not only a lived experience but also a rhetorical and relational practice that disrupts diagnostic categories and proposing instead a mode of world-making that foregrounds difference as creative force. 

What lies at the core of the experience for neuroqueers? How can this contribute to insights about neurodiversity and queerness simultaneously? And what theoretical conceptualizations can emerge from this?

The workshop is run by PhD Goldsmiths students: Anna, Daisy, Isla, Leanne, and Ray!