Descriptive Audio
The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood, Co-Creation Studio, descriptive audio, 04:34. Delivered by Research and Outreach Assistant Liam Mullen.
The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood, third mural, 2023. Image courtesy the artists.
Descriptive Audio – Transcript
The e|gallery is located on the ground floor of UTM’s CCT
Building, a humming centre where students collectively study,
find space to relax, and organize pop-up market stalls.
The gallery is encased by frosted glass that reaches from the
floor up to the ceiling. Behind the glass, a lime green wall mounts
fluorescent lights that, when lit, renders a glowing effect in the
architecture.
The gallery’s doors are held open like arms inviting embrace.
Upon passing the threshold, visitors are immediately greeted by
a high-saturation, magenta wall-text which provides context to
the setting of the Co-Creation Studio. Notably, this is where
public programming, and educational encounters will be lead for
the duration of the exhibition.
The gallery space is long and narrow with high-ceilings and
bright lighting. Moving across the length of the longest wall, a
vinyl mural depicting a Mural board—digital interface for charting
collaborative thinking, mind-mapping and workflow—figures the
co-creation working methods and development process
throughout the Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood’s
five-year collaborative investigation into the relationships
between neurodivergent thinking and cinematic creation.
Mural Breakdown:
I will section off the mural into three key zones, moving from left to right across the composition.
On the left-most side, portraits of the Collective and Eastwood are assembled through the tethering of images and cultural
reference that speak to each respective member’s interests. Each selected piece of media is contained within circular elements connected to titles and relevant themes. Here, the circles are all orbiting a central node that reads: “personal profiles.”
Beneath their personal introductions lie a series of spheres denoting preferred conduct and practice championed by the Collective.
The central zone is titled the “third mural,” which introduces core themes such as: branches and root systems, creating relationships through wanderings and spirals of interests, as well as calls for the inversion and subversion of normative ways of being and acting in the world. Through the use of text and thumbnail images, the group forms a wide-reaching net of circular, hexagonal, and rectangular nodes patched into each other through thin, connective lines.
Lastly, at the far end of the gallery, is the pairing of the “First Mural” and “Second Mural.” These murals work in concert to establish senses and sensibilities that collectively steer the direction and creation of the film. The lattice of nodes form what look to be an elemental structure, where each node contributes to a larger composite. A few of many terms mixed together include puppets, sci-fi, horror, sensory ethnography, creatureliness, and gestures.
On the adjacent wall, at the far end of the gallery, a wall-text gives shape to the term and practice of stimming.
Table Breakdown:
At the foot of the composite mural, a series of modular tables stretch across the full length of the slender gallery. The tables consist of trestles, colour-matched to the magenta of the wall texts, that carry 4-foot by 8-foot plywood sheets on top of them. Holding the tables in place are small black, metal woodworking clamps, pinching the seams of the connected tables with magenta-painted blocks.
On the surface of the tables, printed out copies of journal articles, books, and spiral-bound manuscripts are splayed out for publics to engage with. Interspersed throughout the tablesetting, are black task lamps, weighted blankets, earmuffs, and stim toys such as plastic, bellowed tubes for scrunching; squishy,knobbed balls for clenching; fidget spinners, with pop-able bubbles; and elastic, resistance bands for expanding. Plastic-moulded seats with white metal legs are tucked into the tables, offering a place for visitors to sit with the texts and engage with the toys. Strapped around the legs of a few chairs, resistance bands hold tension, allowing sitters’ feet to quickly rebound off of the band as their feet swing.
Installation Views
Co-Creation Studio Resources
Mind Map Interpretive Guide
PDF
Use this guide to explore the Neurocultures Collective's third mural—a sprawling mind map that visualizes their co-research methodology. Highlighting selected annotations and expanding on core concepts found in the mural, this resource traces a few of the many interwoven connections within the work, embracing its open-ended and evolving form.
Co-Creation Studio Bibliography
Books
Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Hanna, Nick Chown, and Anna Stenning, eds. Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm. First edition. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2020.
Cavarero, Adriana. Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude. Translated by Adam Sitze and Amanda Minervini. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Douglas, Patty. Unmothering Autism: Ethical Disruptions and Affirming Care. Vancouver: UBC Press, forthcoming October 2025.
Harbord, Janet. Autism and the Empathy Epidemic. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming October 2025.
Manley, Alex. Post‑Man: Essays on Being a Neurodivergent Non‑Binary Person. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025.
McGuire, Anne. War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.
McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. 1st ed. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Murray, Stuart. Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008.
Rangan, Pooja. The Documentary Audit: Listening and the Limits of Accountability. New York: Columbia University Press, 2025.
Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment and Postnormal Possibilities. Fort Worth, TX: Autonomous Press, 2021.
Yergeau, Melanie. Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.
Books of Poetry
Ba, Latif Askia. The Choreic Period: Poems. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2025.
Boukaila, Imane. Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes: Poems. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2024.
Wolfond, Adam. The Wanting Way: Poems. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2022
About the Multiverse Series: “Multiverse is a literary series devoted to different ways of languaging, curated by neurodivergent poet Chris Martin, and featuring a chorus of editorial voices. Multiverse primarily emerges from the practices and creativity of neurodivergent, autistic, neuroqueer, mad, nonspeaking, and disabled cultures. The desire of Multiverse is to serially surface multiple universes of underheard language that might intersect, resonate, and aggregate toward liberatory futures. In other words, each book in the Multiverse series gestures toward a correspondence—human and more-than-human—that lovingly exceeds what is normal and normative in our society, questioning and augmenting what literary culture is, has been, and can be.”
Book Excerpts and Articles on Neurodiversity
Visual and Cinematic Arts
Baka, Anastasia, and Giulia Busetti, interviewers. “Project Art Works: Kate Adams and Patricia Finnegan.” On Curating, no. 54 (November 2022): 232–238.
Eastwood, Steven. “Cinemautism.” Screen Bodies 1, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 11–31.
McRuer, Robert. “In Focus: Cripping Cinema and Media Studies.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 58, no. 4 (Summer 2019): 134–139.
Smit, Christopher R., and Anthony W. Enns. “Introduction: The State of Cinema and Disability Studies.” In Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability, edited by Christopher R. Smit and Anthony W. Enns, ix–xviii. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001.
Co-Creation, Collaboration, Networks
Cizek, Katerina, and William Uricchio. “Introduction and Overview,” COLLECTIVE WISDOM: Co-Creating Media within Communities, across Disciplines and with Algorithms. Cambridge: MIT Press Works in Progress, 2019: 2–29.
Deligny, Fernand, Drew S Burk, Catherine Porter, and Bertrand Ogilvie. “Living Between the Lines” and “The Arachnean” in The Arachnean and Other Texts. 1st ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016: 9-19; 33-113.
Eastwood, Steven, Bonnie Evans, Sebastian Gaigg, Janet Harbord, and Damian Milton. “Autism through Cinema: Co-Creation and the Unmaking of Knowledge.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 38, no. 5 (2022): 673-690.
Eastwood, Steven, and the Neurocultures Collective. “The Neurocultures Collective: Co-Creating Moving Images.” The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Issue 09: DIFFUSING (June 2021): 30-33.
Critical Neurodiversity Studies
Bergenmar, Jenny, Louise Creechan, and Anna Stenning, eds. Critical Neurodiversity Studies: Divergent Textualities in Literature and Culture. 1st ed. Critical Interventions in the Medical and Health Humanities. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025. Excerpts include:
- Bergenmar, Jenny, Louise Creechan, and Anna Stenning, “Introduction” to Critical Neurodiversity Studies: Divergent Textualities in Literature and Culture, 1-17.
- O’Donoghue, Sarinah. “‘Read between the signs’: autism, sensory experience and narrative invention”, 41-56.
- Thampuran, Arya. “Re-embodying difference: race, space and neurodiverse realities”, 57-71.
- Ashley, Abs. “Neuroqueer (a)socialities: mapping out neurotrans textualities through literary ephemera”, 72-89.
- Montalti, Chiara. “Neurodivergent futures: community, vulnerability and social change in Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed series” 141-156.
- Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Hanna, and Anna Nygren. “An autistic writerness: exploring autistic reader-writer agency”, 189-201.
- McGrath, James. “AutisTime: imagined friends and borrowed clocks”, 202-217.
Ne’eman, Ari, and Elizabeth Pellicano. “Neurodiversity as Politics.” Hum Dev. 2022 May; 66 (2): 149-157. Pluquailec, Jill. Dis/orientating Autism, Childhood, and Dis/ability: Developing Social Theory for Disabled Childhoods. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Rippon, Gina. "The Missing Women of Autism Are Differently Different." Aeon, April 1, 2025.
Woods, Richard, Damian Milton, Larry Arnold, and Steve Graby. “Redefining Critical Autism Studies: a more inclusive interpretation.” Disability & Society 33 (6): 974–979.
Yergeau, Melanie. “Clinically Significant Disturbance: On Theorists Who Theorize Theory of Mind.” Disability Studies Quarterly 33 (4).
Articles from the Re • Storying Autism Writing Collective
Douglas, Patty, Carla Rice, Katherine Runswick-Cole, Steacy Easton, Margaret F. Gibson, Julia Gruson-Wood, Estée Klar, and Raya Shields. “Re-Storying Autism: A Body Becoming Disability Studies in Education Approach.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 25.5 (2019): 605–622.
Liska, Sherri, Kat Singer, Emily Gillespie, Sheryl Peters, and Patty Douglas. “Autistic, Surviving, and Thriving Under COVID-19: Imagining Inclusive Autistic Futures–A Zine Making Project.” Lateral Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, Issue 11.2 (Fall, 2022), Crip Pandemic Life: A Tapestry.
Raya Shields, Steacy Easton, Julia Gruson-Wood, Margaret F. Gibson, Patty N. Douglas, and Carla M. Rice. “Storytelling Methods on the Move.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 38. 5 (2022): 691–710.
About Re•Storying Autism in Education: A multimedia storytelling project that brings together Autistic people, family members, practitioners, educators and artists to rethink practice in ways that desire the difference of Autism.
Disability Justice
Chapman, Robert, and Havi Carel. Neurodiversity, epistemic injustice, and the good human life. Journal of Social Philosophy, 53 (2022):614–631.
Egner, Justine E. “‘The Disability Rights Community was Never Mine’: Neuroqueer Disidentification”. Gender & Society, 33(1) (2019): 123 147.
Hodge, Nick, Patty Douglas, and Bronagh Byrne. “Developing the Right(s) Approach for Autism.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Children's Rights and Disability, edited by Angharad E. Beckett and Anne-Marie Callus, 113-128. London: Routledge, 2023.
Krazinski, Meaghan. “Celebrating Neurodivergence amid Social Injustice.” Hypatia 38, no. 4 (2023): 726–745.
Co-Creation Studio
Sam Chown Ahern, a visual artist working with drawing, illustration, bookworks, photography and sound. Sam was also the co-host of the CH4 documentary Are You Autistic?;
Lucy Walker, a member of the Project Artworks Collective, working with costume and puppet making, drawing and small set building, all involving alter egos;
Georgia Kumari Bradburn, a short filmmaker whose work focuses on metamorphosis and transformation, and an embodied autistic phenomenology of cinema;
Robin Elliot-Knowles, an associate artist of the Project Artworks Collective, whose practice includes painting, drawing, and graphic-novels, considering themes of intersectionality, post-colonialism, and transgender (Robin is also the curator of the B-Movie Fan Club, a monthly screening at Hastings Electric Palace);
Benjamin Brown, a film programmer/curator whose creative practice involves drawing, video, and photography, with a particular focus on sensory ethnography (Ben also runs a film club called Citizen Autistic).
In 2018, The Blackwood presented Steven Eastwood’s THE INTERVAL AND THE INSTANT in the 5-part exhibition series Take Care, curated by Letters & Handshakes (Greig de Peuter & Christine Shaw). Steven’s participation in Take Care included “The Interval and the Instant: Inscribing Death and Dying,” a conversation with Dr. Naheed Dosani, Dr. Jenny Lau, and Dr. Kim Wedger as part of the the 3-day event Running with Concepts: The Empathic Edition.
This section of the exhibition puts a spotlight on the collaborative methods of the Neurocultures Collective. Featuring mind maps borne from their visual thinking and ongoing conversations, these materials visualize the Collective’s long-term examination of the connections between autism and cinema. They also serve to emphasize production models led by neurodivergent creators who are too often expected to justify their identities rather than shape how they are represented. As the Collective shares, this “co-creation method offers opportunity, inclusion and visibility” and seeks to create “new vantage points into the complex ecologies of collaborating.” Together, they foster forms of trust and connection between neurodiverse artists, audiences, communities, and the sensory spaces they collectively shape.
To further support this ethos of collaboration, the gallery space has been transformed into a sensory-friendly studio environment that encourages group research and learning. Outfitted with tables, chairs, stim toys, and a variety of materials tied to the exhibition’s themes, this co-creation studio offers a welcoming and inclusive setting designed to engage visitors and nurture creativity, dialogue, and collective exploration.
Use this guide to explore the Neurocultures Collective's third mural—a sprawling mind map that visualizes their co-research methodology. Highlighting selected annotations and expanding on core concepts found in the mural, this resource traces a few of the many interwoven connections within the work, embracing its open-ended and evolving form.
A bibliography of the readings available in the Co-Creation studio.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
The galleries are open. Hours of operation: Monday–Saturday, 12–5pm.
Holiday hours: regular gallery hours are in effect until and including Saturday, December 6. The galleries will then be closed for the holidays, except for regular hours on Saturday, December 13. In 2026, the galleries reopen Monday, January 5.
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.