It was an amazing experience, being a part of such a groundbreaking, massive yet cohesive and well curated festival. (Catch snippets of Snoosphere in this video!)
Moving on ahead, I am looking forward to The BIG Anxiety Festival 2019. Stay tuned, everyone!
Singapore
I’ll be speaking in the panel at the Joint IHL SEN (Institute of Higher Learning, Special Education Needs) Forum on 14 September 2018 at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic. The extended title of my panel speech is: “Autism, Neurodiversity and a Neurocosmopolitan Future.” My workshop (taking place after lunch) will be about “Embracing Neurocosmopolitanism: different ways of empathy and communication.”
Free admission but registration necessary.
More details and registration here: Joint IHL SEN Forum 2018
I finally uploaded it here.
Scheherazade’s Sea: autism, parallel embodiment and elemental empathy. 2016
It’s been sitting there in the bowels of my external storage drive since 2016. I am very proud of this work – not merely because I won the top award to be won among postgraduates, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Research 2016, but much more because of the way I survived the odds with Lucy’s help and that of my loyal friends, and my one and only amazing sister (and her wonderful hubby). It is a team effort of grit, will, faith and a lot of sand in the mouth. It is a testament to me of the beauty of love and friendship.
As the final chapter will tell, the work has been the best thing to happen to me. I waited and longer for this all my life, and it is a dream come true. (The PhD journey – not the Dean’s Award, I never dreamt of that, never in my wildest dream would I think I would win it – actually, I didn’t even know it existed until I was informed that I was in the running!)
Thank you, dear friends who have helped prop me up and given me all that amazing strength to persist.
WE DID IT!
Scheherazade lives on.
Here are the speakers notes for my presentation yesterday (11 Aug 2018) at our disability-led forum on Disability-Led Practice, a groundbreaking first in Singapore. I’ve also added more detailed links to videos in this post.
This is the complete unedited script of my TEDx speech, delivered today amidst a flurry of technical failures and farcical-comedic twists. (Read about it here.)
—
AUTISTIC THRIVING
Dawn-joy Leong
4 August 2018
TEDx Pickering Street
Singapore
~
I dance,
Because
I cannot walk,
The ground,
It is too strange.
I must count:
One, two,
One, two, three!
Autistic people are given many different labels by the non-autistic world. One of them is ‘clumsy,’ and by that measure, I suppose I am – it is a conscious effort for me to walk in a straight line, navigate bumpy surfaces, and stroll and chat at the same time. Yet, how does ‘clumsiness’ explain the ability to dance? When there is music, my body becomes freed from the tyranny of the walk, and the ground doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. Continue reading
Dawn-joy Leong 