Altering attitudes to autism via images

Autistic kids and younger individuals from south Wales have created a images exhibition to try to change detrimental attitudes.

“But you don’t look autistic” contains portraits of numerous neurodivergent adults and kids.

Jade West from Rewild Play, a Newport charity, mentioned neurodivergent kids have been “bombarded with messages of can’t” however the exhibition was making an attempt change that mindset.

Fifteen-year-old Liam felt “pride” that his portrait options within the exhibition and mentioned he wished to participate in response to different individuals’s response when he tells them he’s autistic: “A lot of the time, they just speak to you as if you’re not as smart as them… or you just can’t do the things they do.

“Normally it is like, ‘oh, that is unhappy’… it is condescending.”

Liam said the support he received from the charity helped him “settle for the very fact” he is autistic.

He is on the waiting list for an official diagnosis, but said he had been told by professionals that he exhibits autistic and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits.

Mackenzie, 16, said taking photographs and interviewing those sitting for them helped him learn about the “completely different facets of autism”.

Diagnosed at eight years old, he has been subjected to negative attitudes: “It’s actually annoying when individuals type of deal with you as you are like, a bit of bit much less.”

The initial idea for the exhibition stemmed from a conversation Jade had with her daughter that made her recognise the need for “constructive illustration”.

Jade was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 42 and is on the waiting list for an autism diagnosis.

The self-described “chatty” 45-year-old said stereotypes meant people do not understand her diagnosis, telling her “you possibly can’t be autistic”.

The mother-of-two’s photograph, also featured in the exhibition, aimed at tackling “misconceptions”.

She mentioned: “I nonetheless do not voluntarily supply up the knowledge as a result of I’m going to get judged.

“Maybe there’s a part of me that wanted the positive representation for myself.”

Although each Liam and Mackenzie admit feeling uncomfortable by that includes within the mission, they felt strongly they wished to be a part of a change in individuals’s attitudes.

Liam defined that it was “very hard” when individuals’s views could possibly be “negative a lot of the time”.

Mackenzie added: “People seem to think that the only form of autism is the kind of one where you’re, like, really struggling.

“It’s actually annoying as a result of individuals with autism can do issues. And lots of people who make actually good issues have autism.”