Combine and create!
Hi again! It's Callum Brazzo, autistic performance poet, community collaborator and author of Autistic Lincs!
Earlier this year, I was part of the inaugural Going Forward Music Festival and we are already fundraising for 2019 (the link to help us is at the end of this column).
If people are to 'take the mask off' and be their authentic autistic selves, I truly believe that merging communities is a very positive way forward. The festival exemplifies how autistic people like me can work very well together with non-autistic/neurotypical/allisti/'normal' people.
These people, in the autistic community, have been referred to as NTs (neurotypicals), allistic and other names. Essentially, people are people. Later this week, I will meet with the committee with details of big things to come in 2019 on a personal level but we will also talk about the festival and people with genuine desire to change our local community. I will chat to people with 'lived experience' like me, our minds will conjoin and create something wonderful.
What will we do to fundraise? Maybe I'll put on a poetry performance or a music evening? Watch this space...
The impact of this festival is far beyond Spalding as I have shown before with Spotted: Spalding's ability to unite for good, but Spalding and our local area needs this because pseudoscience (quackery), hate crime, abuse and other such awful thought processes and outcomes for autistic and disabled people can be borne out of a lack of diversity and appropriate education.
Books like How To End The Autism Epidemic by J.B. Handley are bad for autistic people and I strongly encourage my readership to sign and share the following petition against its promotion online and offline.
We cannot let it divide and conquer our communities.
We are doing fabulous things here in Spalding and demonstrating that we can achieve when we unite, like the excellently-attended BBC Radio 4's Any Questions which is a format that should return, in my opinion, and pushing forward with projects and services like the Going Forward Social Group and Little Miracles Spalding.
We have to let our neurologies unite, autistic and neurotypical alike and connect, collaborate and CREATE.
How do you end the hate epidemic?
Spread love, combine and conquer!
You can sign and share the Going Forward Music Festival 2019 fundraising petition here:
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/goingforwardmusicfestival?utm_term=PVMRB7Djy
Contact me on Facebook and Twitter @Callum Brazzo, call or text me on 07528 810 172 or go to callumbrazzo.com to connect, collaborate and create with me!
Until Next Tuesday!
