International Autism Awareness Day 2016 #autismawareness
A significant number of children with autism are gifted artistes and need to be provided the appropriate environment and stimulation to flower. Kavitha Krishnamoorthy, parent, arts facilitator, activist, observer-of-children, shares her insights and learnings in this conclusion of a two-part series article on autism spectrum disorder.
As I began observing and working with more children with autism, I realised that what I saw with my son Ananth was true for many other children with autism too, though it may be for an art other than music.
Read the first part here: There is music in everything I hear
Many of them have an inkling, a natural flair for the arts, defined in its broadest sense to include music, movement, theatre, visual art, story-telling, cooking, gardening etc. I discovered that they have a very sharp sense of the aesthetic. That they are very discerning when it comes to their taste in the arts. That they have a keen eye, ear and hand for detail, for precision.
Facilitating a Visual Arts programme at Bubbles Centre for Autism, Bangalore and directing a music therapy programme Sampoorna, Bangalore, two very rich and meaningful experiences, helped deepen my understanding on what the arts are for children with autism.
The artworks were done by Atif, Ananth, Nandita from Bubbles Centre for Autism.
Art: their humsafar, their co-traveller
Children with autism share an innate, fundamental cannot-be-understood-rationally connection with their art. A connection they seem to have difficulty in forging with other aspects of their life.
Art for them is often their identity, it is their raison d’etre. Their personality seems to change when in the presence of their art. A child who is screaming, who cannot wait for anything and will throw a tantrum if asked to wait, will wait patiently till the art facilitator opens a box of crayons or mixes the paint. Her waiting so patiently was not observed in any other environment! She seemed to draw some security from the fact that she would soon be creating her art and that helped her wait.
When with their art, their focus and attention will be at its best, though they may have trouble with attention in other areas of their lives. They look for complexity and brilliance, mediocrity bores them.
Pattern lovers that they are, many children with autism revel in identifying patterns whether in melody, rhythm or visually.There were children at Sampoorna who surprised us with being able to repeat complex rhythmic patterns without ever being taught. There was a child who created his own rhythm patterns with which the non-percussionist therapist could not keep pace!
Many are creators, not reproducers, theythrive in creating. The urge to create is just flowing out of them. Give them their medium and it is almost like they cannot wait to get started. So high is their need, it is almost compulsive. It is like it’s all there inside and it just HAS to come out.
They can practice their art repeatedly, be with it for hours on end. Listen to a song, a tune, a note over and over and over again, almost like it has to get into their soul. Paint or colour, paper after paper after paper and still not be ‘done’. Some professionals call this tendency to persevere dysfunctional.
But, isn’t this how all creative people, all artist(e)s operate?
Art: their voice, their expression
Ananth has different sounds, phrases of songs, tones and tunes to express different emotions. One for happiness, one for excitement, one for frustration. And these have changed down the years too!
Art being an expression for children with autism sometimes seems very esoteric and difficult to understand. As someone outside of them, we can only infer what they are expressing, never really be very sure.
And the mistake we do is we over analyse. When using colours, if a child uses red, he must be angry, she’s using blue, she must be in a calm state. I think that’s an over simplification. One can never really understand what the child is expressing only through studying the work of the child. You have to know the child and her or his emotional state, background etc. to really be able to even attempt to figure out what they are expressing.
But just to give an idea, here is a very simple example. A child walks into the art room kicking and screaming, obviously unhappy, maybe frustrated. He begins to work with clay. He squeezes, pounds, rolls, pinches the clay and in a little while, his movements on the clay lose their ferocity, their vehemence. After a little longer, when asked if he would like to work with something else, he lets go off the clay and asks for paints or crayons, he has moved to do some other work.
What has he expressed through this? To me, it seems that he has expressed all that built up frustration and unhappiness and through working with clay, let go of it and gathered himself into a more calm state, ready for doing other things expected of him.
Does this not present us – parents, professionals and caregivers - such a powerful tool to understand our children? For children who have such difficulty with communication, can the arts not really become their voice? Don’t the arts but represent another form of communication which we need to understand?
Of Savants and Savants-in-waiting
Some children show their innate talent early in life. Like a child who takes hold of anything he can use to draw and draws all around the house, including using soap to draw on the bathroom mirror. A child who at less than three years is sketching faces with features, when most children would be scribbling and drawing lines and shapes. A child who would constantly hum, a tune in his head always. A child who would get excited with similar sounding tunes. A child who would drum on any surface available, with anything available. These are the savants - children who have an innate talent, who know without ever having been taught formally. Most of us know that many children with autism show savant abilities.
But what we discovered both in Bubbles and Sampoorna is that there is another set of children who flower when provided the appropriate environment and stimulation. Parents would never have called their children particularly artistic or musical, but these children were making an instant and slowly, a deep connection with art or music.
I believe today, that there are more artistes among the community of people with autism than we know. The issue is not of lack of talent but the very limited opportunities available for nurturing the talent. Provided there is enough support, we will make exciting discoveries of new talent.
Have we as a community or a society done justice to the huge wealth of artistic talent within the community of children or people with autism?
Given their immense talent, do the arts not have tremendous potential to be a mainstay, a lifelong engagement for our children?
While we periodically hear of individual stories of young people and adults with autism securing a platform for their art, stories of collective, institutional efforts to tap into this potential are still too few and far between. As our children with autism grow into adolescents with autism and into adults with autism, isn’t it time to start creating possibilities?
Dreams and possibilities
I now dream of a space where children, young people, adults with autism, can be engaged in all kinds of artistic pursuits.
- Where they have the freedom to create what they want to create, unbound by what we think they should be creating, unbound by ideas of our limited imagination.
- Where they create and we find ways to take their creations to the world outside.
- Where they can paint, draw, sketch, write stories, create music, sing, play an instrument, do theatre, cook, grow a garden, run a café, weave…... endless possibilities.
- Where some people who love patterns, create designs and some others who love stamping transfer the designs into block printed stoles, saris, curtains……. endless possibilities.
- Where the art is presented as art, exhibited, collected, performed,treasured ……. endless possibilities.
- Where a person’s fascination for the fidelity of sound, makes her or him an audio engineer, a person who sketches and has a sense of humour, becomes a cartoonist, and one who has a vivid imagination writes stories, creates comic strips …. endless possibilities.
What does creating such a space entail?
As parents, wehave to jump in and create spaces that function as Academies for Excellence in the Arts.
But we cannot do this alone.
We have looked at what the arts means for our children. If we have to start understanding what the children mean for the arts, then the artistic community would need to extend a hand to us. I somewhere believe that our children may be at the cusp of some new movement in the arts; for it to find fruition, we need the support of the artistic community.
Another aspect: Children with Autism benefit from Theatre Based Program
Let us collectively work with our dreams to offer our children the possibility of a rich and meaningful life exploring the arts to their fullest potential!
The insights in this article do not belong to me alone. All insights come to one within a social context. It is in conversations with mentors and colleagues that my observations have been contextualized and more fully formed.
A deeper understanding of autism I owe to Sarbani Mallick, Director, Bubbles Centre for Autism, Bangalore. All that I know of using the joy of the visual arts to facilitate learning is thanks to the indomitable Jackie Chandani, arts educator and trainer. The credit for providing me with opportunities to more deeply understand music and autism rests with acclaimed Carnatic musician Bombay Jayashri who is charting new territory in reaching music to our children. Her dedicated student Abhinaya Shenbagaraj has been consistently working with children with autism and is a trailblazer in opening up new avenues. My gratitude is also to colleagues in Sampoorna–Ganesh, Colleen, Janani, Vidya and Ritu for the many insights around music and autism.
