Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice

Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice:

Neuroqueer (v): the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously

• Walker, Nick Dr., ‘Neuroqueer: An Introduction’ (2021) 

This 12-week online course is co-facilitated by KR Moorhead, Marta Rose and Meg Max.

What is the course about?

This course is a deep dive into a variety of ‘neuroqueering’ practices, geared towards artists and creatives. As a community, we will deconstruct capitalist/colonialist concepts of time, work, productivity, shame, ‘executive function’, giving and receiving feedback, and more, while simultaneously constructing new systems, languages, narratives, and ways of being/creating that subvert, defy, disrupt, and liberate us from neuronormativity and heteronormativity.

Sessions will feature a mix of facilitator presentation, practical and reflective writing exercises, and opportunities for group discussion. No attendees will ever be pressured to speak or share. 

See below for session titles and descriptions

*This course can be taken as a follow-on from Writing While Neurodivergent or as a standalone course.

Who is this course for?

Anyone who writes or makes art (or would like to). No previous knowledge or experience required.

“One can neuroqueer, and one can be neuroqueer. A neuroqueer individual is any individual whose identity, selfhood, gender performance, and/or neurocognitive style have in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering, regardless of what gender, sexual orientation, or style of neurocognitive functioning they may have been born with.” (Walker, N.)

When will this course run?

Every Thursday: Oct 3rd - Dec 19th. 6-8pm UK/1-3pm EST

Where will this course run?

All sessions will run on Zoom. Sessions will be recorded and shared with all ticket holders.

Register your interest and get exclusive access to discounted Early Bird Tickets!

Early Bird Tickets on Sale from Aug 8th - Aug 22nd:

Accomplice: £349 (or 4 monthly payments of £87.25)

General Admission: £249 (or 4 monthly payments of £62.25)

Subsidised: £149 (or 4 monthly payments of £37.25)

Regular Ticket Prices: (£399/£299/£199 or 4 monthly instalments)

Sessions:

Oct 3rd: An Intro to Neuroqueering: Subverting, Defying, Disrupting, Liberating (facilitated by KR Moorhead)

This first session will introduce you to Dr Nick Walker’s concept of Neuroqueering - a practice of actively dismantling neuronormative and heteronormative performances, practices and structures. We’ll lay out the ways in which this course will interpret and respond to the concept of Neuroqueering and we’ll look at how our creative work and practice can (and already does) engage in the practice of neuroqueering. There will be opportunities to create, daydream, discuss and share.

Oct 10th: Creating in Spiral Time (facilitated by Marta Rose)

Creative people are often plagued by a sense that we have “wasted” too much of our lives and have “fallen behind” our peers in terms of productivity and creative accomplishment. This is especially true for neurodivergent creatives, but as the demands of capitalism intensify, even so-called neurotypical people are feeling caught in this shame-filled time crunch that is deadly to making art. If there is any hope for finding a more enjoyable and realistic relationship with time, we need new metaphors that defy the contemporary Western ones that have colonized the world. We will consider the ways colonialist/capitalist concepts of time are not so much “natural” or “real,” but rather embody a set of values that we can reject and resist. We will explore alternative metaphors and values of rest, slowness, and cyclicality. This session will offer opportunities for guided free writing exercises and discussion. 

Oct 17th: Ways of Knowing and Being: Reclaiming lost ontologies, epistemologies, and language (facilitated by KR Moorhead)

Neuroqueer people have always existed. And long before European colonisation (and the pathologisation of natural human diversity that came with it) there would have been many ‘Neurodivergent’ & ‘Queer’ ways of knowing and being which would have been shared with, and benefited, the community at large. Most of this knowledge has been erased, refuted or dismissed. In this session we’ll look at examples of reclaimed, rediscovered, and newly created language and knowledge, as well as unearth our own. There will be opportunities to create, daydream, discuss and share.

Oct 24th: Design Thinking: A paradigm for creativity (facilitated by Marta Rose)

Building on the Spiral Time workshop, we will explore compulsory executive functioning as a value-laden paradigm that serves capitalism far more than it serves creativity and that has been used as a cudgel to shame creatives into conformity with the needs of capital. We will examine the ways executive functioning is not so much a set of skills but rather a set of values to which most people are actually poorly suited. We will explore the possibility that design thinking might be a more intuitive way of thinking and dreaming and making art that offers an alternative paradigm: what if we are not actually meant to be executives, but designers instead? This session will offer opportunities for guided free writing and discussion.

Oct 31st: Do No Harm: Self editing, community and workshop alternatives that make you feel good (facilitated by Meg Max)

We’re made to believe that editing and workshopping are important tools to help make our writing better, however, writers often seem to walk away from these processes feeling worse about their work. In Do No Harm, we’ll talk about how being taught to look outwards for validation can damage us as writers, self-editing as self-advocacy, how to find and build communities that meet our needs, and ways to give and get feedback on writing that doesn’t perpetuate the harm done in traditional workshopping spaces.

*Writers are invited to bring a short piece of their own writing to explore during our time together. (You won't be asked to share!)

Nov 7th: Disrupting Shame (facilitated by Marta Rose)

As we have discussed in the previous two workshops, shame is a powerful political tool used in almost every area of our lives—our families, our schools, our workplaces, even our identities—to wrench us into conformity with the values of industrial time and compulsory executive functioning.  In this workshop we will examine the ways that shame creates dysfunction in our creative lives, often becoming a closed, recursive system in which we are shamed for being different, the shame creates dysfunction, and the dysfunction comes to define us, causing even more shame. We will examine some of the ways that shame shows up in our lives and bodies—especially as avoidance, procrastination, and the serial abandonment of creative projects we love—and explore ways we can disrupt shame so it becomes less and less debilitating. This session will offer opportunities for guided free writing and discussion.

Nov 14th: Use Your Words: Consent and relationship with creative work (facilitated by Meg Max)

We’re told so many things about ourselves, and our creativity, often unconsciously building belief systems that make us feel terrible about who we are and how we work. Pulling on a variety of relationship models and consent theory, Use Your Words is a guided reflective session designed to help folks question their beliefs around creative work, decentering all the shoulds and recentering their own self knowledge and understanding as the foundation of a consensual and sustainable relationship with and to creativity.

*This session will offer invitations to write and/or create- all writing tools and art materials are welcome, and invitations will be shared after the session with all who register. 

Nov 21st: Mise en Place: Getting started and moving through creative projects (facilitated by Marta Rose)

Many of us have creative aspirations that are difficult to realise because our need for accommodations and support are so misunderstood, shamed, and unanswered. We may  struggle with tasks like getting started, maintaining momentum, and following through. We may also struggle with mess and caring for our spaces and our supplies. There are a million hacks out there that promise to offer the silver bullet, and this workshop is … Not That. But this workshop will consider some of the reasons that these issues plague us and offer a concept from the culinary world, Mise en Place, as both a practice of slowness and a set of sometimes helpful strategies. This session will offer opportunities for guided free writing and discussion.

Nov 28th: How To Be A Writer: (Im)practical ways of writing on purpose (facilitated by Meg Max)

We’re often told that the only thing we have to do to be a writer is write… but… what if we’re not writing? What if we don’t know how to get started? What if we’re stuck? Writing is easy (and super fun) when we’re able to ride the new idea wave from beginning to end, but it can feel absolutely impossible when the project outlasts our hyperfocus or stops giving us that sweet, sweet dopamine rush. Writing On Purpose acknowledges the desperation of wanting to write, but having no idea how to do it. We’ll get extremely practical by talking about space, time, support, starting and finishing (and more!). And slightly less practical while we talk about intuition, rest and using our feelings as a guiding tool in creative work. 

*Please come ready to write, create, and explore.

Dec 5th: Telling Your Truth: The power of fiction, fantasy & radical memoir (facilitated by KR Moorhead)

Marginalised people are rarely afforded the right to tell their own story. And when they are, they are expected to tell it in ways that maintain the status quo and reinforce dominant cultural narratives. We’ll attempt to unearth new patterns and structures to create counternarratives to these, and deconstruct dominant concepts of memory, time, and identity in the memoir genre. We’ll consider how blurring the lines between realism and fantasy, autobiography and invention, fact and fiction, can allow us to get to the actual ‘truth’ of our lived experiences as neuroqueering individuals. There will be opportunities to create, daydream, discuss and share.   

Dec 12th: Handle with care: Sharing your writing with the world (facilitated by Meg Max)

This practical session will center the needs of new, nervous and neurodivergent writers, as we walk and talk through the process of sharing your writing with the world. We’ll discuss deciding where and how to share your work, the language of lit mags, outside the box options that let you skip the gatekeepers, bios and cover letters, keeping track of submissions and more. We’ll also acknowledge the reality that sharing your writing can feel more like offering up a piece of your beating heart, and explore the difficult emotions that can come up during this process, ensuring you’re able to handle yourself, and your writing, with the care you both deserve.

Dec 19th: Facilitator’s Salon: Share and chat with the whole group! (co-facilitated by KR, Marta and Meg)

KR, Marta and Meg invite you all to a roundtable discussion and Q&A where we can expand on and explore everything covered in the previous 11 weeks. There will also be the opportunity for attendees to share any art/writing created throughout the course, and any thoughts and responses to the materials and concepts presented. We aim to create a warm, laid-back, supportive space, with no pressure to speak or share. 

Meet the Facilitators:

KR Moorhead (they/them) is an AuDHD, gender non-compliant educator, and author of The First Law of Motion (2009). From 2009-2023 they taught creative writing at the University of East Anglia where they earned an MA in Creative Writing: Prose Fiction in 2007. KR also has a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education Practice and Research, both from UEA.

Since choosing to pursue freelance mentoring and facilitating, KR has launched FLUX: Trans* Writers Circle, as well as a Crash Course in Writing While Neurodivergent. They have facilitated for Writers in Bloom, Beyond Form Creative Writing, Devotion Workshop, Norwich School of Creative Writing, and Oxbridge Academic Courses. They currently teach a number of courses for City Lit, and on the Creative Writing MA at The University of Hull.

Originally from Philadelphia, KR now lives in Norwich, UK with their partner and three cats.

Marta Rose is a queer AuDHD writer and artist. Her work offers critical insights and healing metaphors for reframing the ways we understand neurodivergence. She founded and directs Divergent Design Studios, an online community offering body doubling, workshops, and peer support for neurodivergent creatives. She writes a weekly(ish) substack newsletter called The Spiral Lab, and has published several ebooks, including Neuroemergent Time: Making Time Make Sense for ADHD and Autistic People and Getting Started is the Hardest Part. Her work has been cited by Dr. Devon Price in Unmasking Autism, by Rebecca Schiller in A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention, and by Jesse Meadows in the Sluggish newsletter, among others. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. She has two grown neurodivergent children and lives in Philadelphia, on the land of the Lenni Lenape people, with her partner.

Meg Max is a queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill writer, artist and mother. She’s way more fun than that first sentence makes her sound. Her fiction has been published online and in print throughout North America, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has a certificate in therapeutic arts from the Canadian International Institute of Art Therapy, and alongside founding Writers in Bloom, has facilitated with various schools, organizations and artists through Canada, the UK and the US. For a good time, Meg takes long walks where she gathers treasures to make art out of found or recycled materials. Meg lives on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people, with her husband, kiddo, two dogs and three vacuums.