Raising Neurodiversity Awareness In Public Spaces

Raising Neurodiversity Awareness In Public Spaces

For this task, we had to work in small groups to come up with a way to raise awareness about neurodiversity issues in Public Spaces.

To begin with, we researched neurodiversity and its meaning. We found out that around 1 in 7 people in the UK struggle with Dyslexia, Autism, ADHD, OCD and more every single day. It is very often found that public spaces enhance the triggers of these health conditions which stops people from waning to go out into the world. We decided that our aim was to not only raise awareness but do something fun and interactive that brings the community together.

We chose to focus on Dyslexia for many reasons, one of them being that it often goes unnoticed and looked down upon as an excuse for not knowing how to read or write. I then went and educated myself on what dyslexic people need in order for day to day life to become simpler and I found out that coloured overlays made writing clearer and easier to read. My idea was to have 5 large coloured overlays hanging from a pole in the middle of Millennium square, Leeds. At first, I thought that might be enough to raise awareness. However, most people would probably just walk past and no money would be raised.

As a group, we decided that we wanted our campaign to reach all audiences and lure people in so we added a big screen that would stand at the opposite end of the overlays. Our idea was that the public could donate to raising awareness for dyslexia by scanning the QR code on the screen, drawing something on their phone, sending it in and see their drawing on the big screen in the middle of Leeds. All the donations would then go to getting more coloured overlays in businesses and schools across the UK.