Autistic Pride flag design released free to use

Autistic Pride Day is a global event celebrated widely online and offline on or around June 18th every year. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, nearly all offline Autistic Pride events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future.

To look forward to the day we will be able to freely celebrate Autistic Pride without restrictions once more, the Autistic Empire has released a high-resolution, professionally designed, autistic pride flag under the Creative Commons licence permitting any use of this flag, including commercial use, as long as attribution is made to the Autistic Empire.

The infinity symbol represents neurodiversity, the rainbow represents the pride movement. Gold is used by autistic advocates as the chemical symbol for gold is Au (from the Latin aurum). Gold is promoted as an alternative to non-autistic-led groups designating colours such as blue as a symbol for autism.

Feel free to use the autistic pride flag to make flags, banners, badges, print it, redesign it, sell it – it’s yours, forever.

Autistic Pride Flag

 

For more information about licencing and the history of autistic pride, please see our Autistic Pride page.

A PSA from Audible Autism: Your Ideas Wanted!

Hi everyone,

this is a notice from your production team at Audible Autism, the autonomous podcast of the Autistic Empire. We are in the process of wrapping up our third season and started the planning for recording season 4.

We have some ideas and some guests already signed up, but if you have any ideas or topics you would like to be covered on an autistic-led podcast about autistic life, or you are an autistic person who would like to appear on our podcast, please drop us a line at team@audibleautism.com, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks, and a happy new year, stay safe,

The Audible Autism Team

Check out our latest episodes here:

Autistic Empire at the Autistic Pride Online Celebration 2020

Speech by Sarah McCulloch of the Autistic Empire during the London Autistic Pride slot of the Autistic Pride Online Celebration 2020. Many thanks to the organisers of the celebration and of the London slot for giving us the opportunity to speak.

See our BLM statement.

The Zoom background is a cityscape of London by black autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire, who is based here. You can check out his work and purchase here: https://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/

Natalie Joelle – Poetry Readings for Autistic Pride 2020

Natalie Joelle is a transdisciplinary researcher, creative practitioner, and activist at Birkbeck, University of London, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Fund for Women Graduates. Her critical and creative publications can be found as part of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, the Routledge Environmental Humanities Series, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature, The Goose and Plumwood Mountain. Further information about her work is available at www.gleaning.info.

Natalie recited the following poems at the Autistic Pride Online Celebration on the 20th June, 2020, and has given permission for them to be shared below. 

 

ASP, or, Autistic Spectrum Pleasures

 

May I love the textures

May I love the patterns

May I love the vibrations

 

May I speak my mind

May I be heard in kind

May I not need to communicate

 

May I have time alone

May I turn off my phone

May I have the key to the quiet room

 

Please

 

May I turn the lights down

May I sit down

May I have this seat

 

May I have more time to eat

May I have something spicy

 

May I be safe to play

May I throw my personal alarm away

 

May I change this world

May I rock your world

May I stim with your head

 

May I interrupt your clock

May I taste your

May I hyperfocus on this specific


 

come AS you are

no sweet aspersions

shall the heavens

let fall

 

melting it down

and Zoming out

diversely or savagely

unmanning the mannerly

with my unruly speech

raising my rip-

raised micro-soft

hand raising it

and putting it down

 

in Piccadilly Circus

to my fiery juggler

they’re guarding

their jugulars

and do I oppress

to liberate this

 

so oppress this I

limiting what I

express sit for a

minute’s selective

muting in the encrypteric

closing down

not coming out

cancelling my noise and

zoning out

 

in Monty Python’s Flying Circus

nt the right room

for as argument

from too many screens

to alexithyme

losing the language

of my dreams

 

oh break my heart

for I cannot hold

my tongue

and my tongue

cannot hold my heart

in this room

 

ah Greta Thunb

this world is not ready

for some of us

yet

 

oh let

aspersions sweet

heaven shall fall

 

 

Black Lives Matter

 

On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police officers in Minnesota, United States. His death has sparked demonstrations around the world, protesting against police brutality and institutional racism against black people. We have seen several counter-arguments made that we think have undermined that important message. The Autistic Empire therefore republished a Medium post, All Lives Matter?, in full across all of our social media to provide some context for people who genuinely believe All Lives Matter is a more inclusive term than Black Lives Matter.

This article was not written for autistic people per se, but we have seen a number of autistic people who have misunderstood the social context of Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter and said things that have received angry, hurt responses and do not understand why. This article tries to explain the social context with step-by-step explanations, multiple analogies, statistics, and cartoons

You are invited to share this article in whatever format would be most useful. Full links are below.

The Autistic Empire is an international group of autistic people who come from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds. We explicitly put diversity at the heart of all that we think about. Our founders were black, white and Jewish. When we were first discussing what we wanted the Empire to look like, it was not even a question that we would be anti-racist. We spent hours testing the skin tone of the hands in our logo so they could be read as the widest possible range of ethnicities (we hit on apricot). We wrote into our branding policy that the skin tone could be altered to something culturally appropriate for any regional or Black and Minority Ethnic events, even though we have never held one. We added Palestine to our drop-down menus even though PayPal does not recognise Palestine as a state and we will have to process payments manually if any autistic Palestinian does wish to join us. We do not wait for someone to feel excluded before we take action.

But we have very limited resources and we need the solidarity of others to make this work. In the two years that we have been in existence as an organisation, we have tried over and over again to reach out to black groups, black autistic people, and to talk to other autistic communities about black issues. We have been hindered by a lack of infrastructure and lack of understanding of autistic people, black narratives, and the specific needs of black autistic people. We have had black Citizens represent the Empire at events where they were made to feel uncomfortable as the only non-white person present. We have had black people working with us victimised by micro-aggressions at autistic events. It has been very frustrating.

The George Floyd protests and the racist reaction to them has been distressing for many of us to witness. The article below is part of our effort to express solidarity with people who will continue to experience racism and prejudice after the last protester goes home. The truly global phenomenon and sheer intensity of these protests have prompted many conversations within both autistic and non-autistic groups and communities about inclusion. We hope that these conversations will create a sustained effort to develop infrastructure that make it easier for us all to breathe. Black lives matter.

With thanks to Alex Mason for taking the time to write the original post and giving permission to share it.

Medium.com post: https://medium.com/@jxelam/532e5061b928

Tweetstorm on Twitter: https://twitter.com/autistic_empire/status/1268817189978726400

Facebook post (in full below): https://www.facebook.com/autisticempire/posts/826723351068928

[On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police officers in Minnesota, United States. His death has sparked…

Posted by Autistic Empire on Friday, 5 June 2020

Virtual Summit on Sensory Processing in Autism (June 3-6)

Pleased to announce that two of our own will be speaking at the Virtual Summit on Sensory Processing in Autism hosted by the STAR Institute in the United States next week! Alex and Sarah will be co-presenting on “Broadening the Spectrum: Sensory Differences and Autism” based on our Grand Sensory Survey and what we’ve learned since.
The Summit is four days June 3-6, 8:00-12:30pm (MDT) with a range of autistic advocates and professionals from across the spectrum (ahem).
Access to all fourteen hours is $129, for more information and the full programme, please visit https://www.spdstar.org/basic/theory-practice-lived-experience

Annual Report 2019

The Autistic Empire Annual Report is now available for 2019.

Due to the company being registered in October 2017 and a significant amount of work done in the run-up to our formal launch in October 2018, this report covers the last two years of operations, and will be reduced to 12 months for future reports.

If the quality of our financial reporting does not meet your standards, we are on the look-out for a book-keeper! Check out our job description here.

Download the Annual Report 2019 here (PDF)

Interview with Grainne McGuiness, Producer of Pablo

Image result for pablo autism

Pablo is a television series for children about an autistic boy who uses magic crayons to create a world of imaginary friends who explain the world to him. Each character represents a different facet of autism. The cast and nearly all the writers are autistic, and topics include things like explaining zips, face blindness, and how annoying it is when your food mixes.

It’s really good.

In preparation for Season 2, which launches in September 2019, the Autistic Empire caught up with Grainne McGuiness, to ask some questions about the show and where it is going next.

 

Watching Pablo, the depiction of autism is spot on. How you did do that? I know all the writers are autistic, but they’re also all spread out. So how did you find them?

Grainne: I have an autistic nephew, and when he and my children were small, they all used to fight a lot. And one day I thought things would be a lot easier if everyone understood a bit more about what he was going through. I also noticed that while they completely accepted him for who he was as a human being, the other kids in preschool may have found his flapping a bit different.

And so I wondered could you create a television show for kids that would expose them to the traits of autism? And by doing that, could you create an understanding? And from understanding, empathy? And then maybe they would not fight so much. That has moved on to our ambition being empathy and acceptance. It started with some desk research, where I came up with an idea that Pablo was a very creative little boy, and that he created an art world of his imagination.

His friends in the art world were all built around fairly obvious traits. Wren is a flapper, Mouse is sensitive to smells and sounds because she has big ears and a big nose. Tang can’t control his limbs very well, and that works perfectly with an Orangutan. Noa doesn’t have a lot of control of his movement, he’s the dinosaur, and he knocks things over and walks through walls as his perception of space isn’t great. And he has a lot of anxiety and a lot of over-empathy. Draff loves facts, he’s a real fact boffin. He’s kind of black and white, and in season 2 he actually introduces a cousin of his who’s even more black and white. That’s his cousin Ze, who is a Zebra.

So the idea was to put the traits of autism on screen, in a fun and funny way that all children would enjoy. I got it commissioned by broadcasters, and then we needed to start the writing process. We found a really experienced children’s television writer called Andrew Brenner. He had written for lots of different shows, and he had a great interest in autism, and creating different stories in the kid’s space. You try to come up with original stories all the time, and new ways of looking at the world. It’s not just always about rainbows and birthday parties, although we do have rainbows and we do have birthday parties.

There’s 52 episodes in series one, and he had the challenge of where do you get the stories from? And so he started talking to people, networking with people on the internet. One person was Donna Williams (who’s now called Polly Samuels). She’s autistic herself and a consultant, so she knew a lot of people and had helped a lot of autistic people. And so Andrew built up relationships with them, asking about their personal experiences in life, and wondering if those personal experiences could be turned around into stories that would deliver on the aims of the show, and be interesting to the preschool audience.

And he just started to meet really fascinating and creative people, who had lots and lots of stories to tell. He nurtured them through the experience, which could be something as simple as being in a coffee shop and just being completely absorbed in the aroma of the coffee, and completely distracted from everything else by the aroma. Or it could be something like face blindness, where Pablo doesn’t recognise his mum anymore, because she’s wearing a fascinator-type hat for a wedding, and he thinks there’s a big purple bird in the house. He nurtured his new collaborators through the process of experience, and how can we turn that experience into a story for pre-schoolers. And then from that, a lot of them went on to write the scripts for the show themselves, and have become established writers for children’s television in their own right now.

That was a process that was absolutely full of joy, because everybody was so excited to be doing it, and everybody was so good at doing it. For the Kids TV space, it meant new writers, new ways of looking at the world, really quirky humour, and it was just amazing. We had the best time ever making this show.

Then when it came to recruiting voice actors, we knew we’d really like to work with autistic people. But how do we do that? We thought it may be hard, and we had a lot of production questions as there’s 52 scripts which is quite a lot. But we did our auditions, and we found our actors, and in all the years that I’ve worked in television, these were some of the most prepared. People who were delighted to be doing it, who wholeheartedly believed in the show, and who got into character and stayed in character.

By and large they over-delivered, and when we said thank you for coming and doing this, they said thank you for the opportunity. It just couldn’t have nice been a nicer journey really. And all that good energy begets good energy. Now the point we’re at in the journey is that we’re about to launch series 2. We’re going to have a 104 episodes of Pablo, and would like to do more. We’re developing a musical theatre show, which were hoping will come out Christmas 2020. Penguin are doing 4 Ladybird books, all based on the series. We’re also looking at other licensing and merchandising deals as well.

Related image

 

What’s the reaction been from the children who watch it?

Grainne: We’ve had so many lovely comments. The show has won loads of awards, it’s on all over the world, and it would only be that if kids wanted to watch it. Kids watch it because it’s funny, because they love the characters, because they find the stories fascinating. They don’t watch the show because Pablo’s autistic, they watch because Pablo’s a great character. Our hope is that by watching the show, they’re coming to love characters with autism. So then when they meet kids in school who think differently, in all sorts of way, then they won’t perceive that as being a barrier to making a friend.

 

 

How does your nephew you feel about it?

Grainne: He’s delighted. He’s a really lovely teenager now, he’s 13. He’s got a lot of changes going on.

 

The main actor is already 11, and he’s supposed to be playing a 5-year-old. How are you going to handle that going forward?

Grainne: We’ll have to see what happens. Right now, he’s great actor and he wants to continue. We would like to do series 3 where Pablo goes into school, because I think that’s the next natural step, and it’s so necessary. It’s important that teachers and classes and everybody in the school understands the perspective of autism. And I’m not convinced that there’s resources in schools. So really what we want to do is create season 3 where he’s in school, that challenging new world, and what his thought patterns are within that world. So that we can all understand what it would be like if you were five, on the autism spectrum, and going to school. I would love to do that. You know, life is full of change.

I really want to do the school one, because the bullying rates for kids on the spectrum is quite high. I think the statistic is 44 percent of kids on the autism spectrum say that they’re bullied in school. I would imagine that’s a very conservative estimate, because that’s maybe the kids that know they’re being bullied as well. We really need to tackle the early-years school space, because going to school if you have autism is probably hard enough without being bullied as well. So maybe we can fix the bullying bit.

I feel very strongly that there aren’t enough resources in school. There still isn’t enough awareness, and if we want acceptance then we need there to be proper inclusion. there needs to be more resources for special education needs in our system, and there needs to be more respect for all kinds of minds and skills. Schools are still very one-note. We need to celebrate all kinds of minds, and encourage adults and children to respect and get to know people who think differently because the world needs that right. The world needs people who think differently and aren’t afraid to say.

 

Finally: why the name Pablo?

Grainne: Because I thought it was a nice word to say. It’s an international name, so I thought it would travel, and also I thought because he’s an artist that it tied in nicely with Pablo Picasso. So there’s 3 reasons really.

 

PABLO IS ON AIR IN THE FOLLOWING COUNTRIES:

Viewers can watch on-demand on YouTube and through BBC Player and RTE Player. For more information visit @PabloTVShow on social media.

CBeebies. BBC Northern Ireland

RTE Junior. Ireland

Universal Kids. America

CBC Kids. Canada

NAT GEO Kids. America/UK

Kids ABC. Australia

Netflix. Worldwide

SVT. Sweden

RTHK. Hong Kong

Tencent. China

RTP. Portugal

NRK. Norway

YLE. Finland

True Visions. Thailand

Show Max. South Africa

Interview with Joseph Michael about Autistic Pride

How did you first find out about autistic pride?

I first read about it on the internet in early 2007. It was on an internet forum discussing the phenomenon. It was also the first time I had heard of Aspies for Freedom.

I was immediately inspired by it and the tagline for the first year, which was “acceptance not cure”. Although I had accepted that I was different at that age (I was 23) I was more proud of things I had achieved in spite of my autism, not because of it.

I interpreted Autistic Pride as not only a demand for society to accept autistic people, but as a challenge to autistic people to accept themselves and each other.

Can you tell us about the history of autistic pride?

Autistic Pride day was created in 2005 on the internet forum aspies for freedom. The date of June 18th was chosen because it was the birthday of the youngest person on the forum at the time. The intention was to uplift and empower Autistic people, and enable us to assert ourselves in public, in the same way Black Pride, LGBT Pride and Mad Pride sought to do the same for their respective marginalised communities.

In 2006 Amy Nelson and a group of others in Aspies for Freedom had a picnic in Hyde Park, and in subsequent years many other people have organised picnics on that day, most notably Kabie Brook and ARGH in Inverness and Chen Gershuni in Israel. It was also celebrated online worldwide.

What made you choose to organise autistic pride events?

I first went to Autscape (www.autscape.org) in August 2014, and was immediately struck by sense of belonging I felt there amongst other Autistic people, and removal of the pervasive anxiety that I had felt amongst other people for most of my life.

I wanted to recreate this, at a lower cost, and something more public facing as well. as I felt Autistic people shouldn’t be hiding from the world.

I chose a small picnic in Hyde Park in June 2015 because it’s been a venue for radical political movements for centuries. People attending had the option of having a quiet picnic, or speaking in speakers corner.

What have been the highlights of autistic pride events?

There have been many. In the ones I have organised in Hyde Park alone, the highlights include:

-Having people gain the confidence to speak in speakers corner, and in front of an audience

-Having passers by who are autistic notice us and join in.

-The sense of belonging and community in these events

Watching Autistic people openly engaging with the world with confidence, and not being met with a hostile response, or if there is hostility from the public, having the confidence to face it down.

-Allowing people who are newly diagnosed, or see other conditions such as downs syndrome or mental illness as defining them explore the autistic side of themselves.

It’s also been great helping and inspiring other people to organise other Autistic Pride events, there have been many in the U.K. over the past two years (see the Autistic Pride alliance Facebook page for details).

What recommendations can you make for anyone else holding autistic pride events?

Start small and simple, in the first year, with no more than 10-20 people. Select a spot in an area in a park that’s central, easy to get to, and people have the option, to be extroverted and public facing, or quietly having a picnic in a secluded area. Make sure toilets and other amenities are nearby, and shelter in case the weather turns bad. With small events, ensure that people who attend do so at their own risk, and people who have trouble taking care of themselves should bring carers.

Advertise it on social media, or local media. Use the first year for experience, to determine what works best, and how much you can handle, then build upon it in future years.

As you gain confidence, you can approach local authorities and get the event registered, and invest in public liability insurance, and set up speakers, gazebos, tents and more. The largest Autistic pride events are in Reading, Chester and Brighton, and can accommodate up to hundreds of people.

Getting donations from nearby supermarkets are very easy, so feel free to do that.

While it’s best to have a small team organising Autistic pride events, in practice, it’s only one or two people who do so. So make sure you are aware of your limits and what you can manage by yourself.

Try and put in a detailed schedule of your event, as this reassures people who attend, but understand that it almost certainly won’t go to plan, so be flexible.

Join Autistic Pride Alliance, a Facebook group that functions as an unofficial hub for Autistic Pride organisers, who will be happy to give encouragement and advice.

There is no central authority that directs Autistic Pride, and each event has it’s own character and conception of what Autistic Pride is. The only real ground rules are: It must be led by Autistic people, No promotion of quack cures or normalising therapies such as ABA and no racism, sexism, homophobia, ‘high-functioning’ supremacy, or any other forms of punching down.

Be careful when getting involved with major charities. There have been many cases where autistic individuals have collaborated with charities on projects and had charities forcibly take them over.

How do you see Autistic Pride developing in the future?

I think over time Autistic Pride events will be get bigger and more organised. Autistic Pride Reading has now become a registered charity and many more may follow suit.

While some pride events may become major, involving hundreds of people, I’d like to see many small events up and down country, in small towns and villages, with a few dozen people each. This way it will reach more people and be more Autistic friendly.

I am very excited to see people doing more overtly public events for Autistic Pride, there was a march in Galway, and live performances in the town centres in Spalding and Chester. I would like to see this develop.

While people with high support needs and severe sensory issues attend autistic pride events, we can always do better at being inclusive and this will be an ongoing debate.

NT-led charities, both good and bad will try to co-opt Autistic Pride for themselves. They need to be constantly reminded that it’s an event led by and for the autistic community. In previous years we have successfully fought off attempts by the NAS and Autistica to co-opt Autistic Pride.

I hope that Autistic pride events will be a catalyst for building a local autistic community. In Tunbridge Wells I intend to found a support group on the back of Autistic Pride.