Re-Imagining Autism: Pedagogical value of participatory performance-based practice

An emerging scientific literature investigates the potential of arts-based approaches to address core social deficits among children and youth with ASD (Corbett et al, 2014; Gabriel, Angevin, Rosen, Lerner, 2015). Although documentaries and books (Guli, Semrud-Clikeman, Lerner, Britton 2013; Hunter, 2014) discuss this topic, more empirical research has been called for to establish the impact of performance-related activities and its development as a pedagogical tool in real world contexts (O’Sullivan, 2015). This proposal addresses this gap through an in depth case study of Imagining Autism methods. Informed by cognitive neuroscience, it is predicated on the principles of embodied cognition the importance of play-based learning (Shaughnessy, 2017; Shaughnessy, Trimingham, 2016) in order to remediate the difficulties autistic people have with communication, social interaction and imagination. The work engages the question of whether performance could be a key to unlocking communicative barriers in ASD (Goldstein, Lerner, Winner, 2017) and whether a creative venue, such as Imagining Autism, could produce long-term benefits for youth with ASD (from arts to non-arts learning contexts) and represent a new creative and embodied educational strategy in this research field.