Five years ago, whilst on a creative retreat in Shropshire, I envisaged the outline of a training course. It was a training course supporting individuals to understand the access needs of Neurodivergent individuals. Currently, we have several training courses about Autism and we have courses to support the needs of the disabled community. Sadly, we have very few of them, and of
course, it has only been in the last ten years that these training courses have existed at all. I do not wish to undermine any of these pre-existing courses and training as they are incredibly valuable and very much needed. However, I believe that we are still lacking understanding of neurodivergence. Neurodivergence is a difference in Neurology and there are several conditions
that fall under the neurodivergent umbrella: Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia (DCD), Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Tourette syndrome, Sensory Processing Differences, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Auditory
Processing Disorder (APD) amongst many others. Being multiply neurodivergent, I wanted a course that helped people understand all of me not just my autism or just my ADHD or Dyspraxia etc. I was also often asked how to support such individuals in my personal life, being an Occupational Therapist and someone with autism myself.
So what did I do? I applied to Arts Council England of course! After three rejections, I was beginning to think my idea was not a credible one but many people within Arts Council England and Open Theatre Company believed in the idea and the value it would bring to the creative community and the world generally. On the fourth attempt, we rejoiced because we were successful but
then we thought ‘oh shit’ now we have to create a training course and approach six partners to work with us.

Journey to Warwick Arts Centre
It was a cold and foggy day on Thursday 15 th January 2026. It was in these conditions that my partner drove me to Coventry to host our first ever Alternative Voices Theatre Company Neurodivergent focused Accessibility training session at Warwick Arts Centre. The journey was not without barriers for someone who is multiply neurodivergent. Firstly, I had to get up at 6am to be in the city by 9am. Usually, I do not start work before midday due to needing to take a lot of medication and using the morning to work on strengthening my body with exercise such as swimming or Yoga. On this day however, we parked at Sky Dome and faced the winding ramp to access the higher levels of the car park as the lower levels were full. This meant that I needed to take my Betahistine tablet for dizziness due to my postural positional vertigo. I wished my partner a good day at work and walked to Pool Meadow bus station in the cold and fog. This is a 15-minute walk for an able-bodied person, 30 minute walk for me.

Thankfully, I arrived at Coventry Bus Station, but the lack of signage meant that I did not know where to go to get on the
12x bus to Warwick Arts Centre. After much complaining and telling me off for not walking in the correct place, a member of staff at the Bus Station did walk me to where I needed to be. I was just grateful to be on the bus out of the cold. I got to Warwick Arts Centre at 11am. The training did not begin until 13:00 so this gave me enough time to warm up, get a hot drink, set up the
training space, meet the Warwick Arts Centre team and my Creative enabler and co-host.

I had never met Andrea Pulford, Director of Planning and Operations at
Warwick Arts Centre nor Bethany Evans, Visitor Experience Manager in
person before. We had several planning meetings online in advance of the
training, but this was the first time we met in person and it was joyous for me
to meet the individuals who were so supportive of the development of the
Alternative Voices Theatre Company training offering.

Once at Warwick Arts Centre
After using the facilities, finding a quiet corner to sit in, having a hot drink and warming up with my coats and blanket I felt a bit calmer and more able to work. Being on the Autism Spectrum as an adult, I have to put strategies in place to ensure I don’t have meltdowns in public places. Yes, that’s right as a 35-year- old I still get meltdowns. A hot drink and a blanket are very soothing and calming for the nervous system and so these are some of the sensory strategies I use to help myself stay calm in stressful situations. I even managed to send a few emails before my creative enabler Liz Leck arrived. A creative enabler is someone who works alongside a creative person to remove barriers and empower them to engage in their creative activities. Liz helped me to focus on the work and reminded me to eat my lunch before the session began which was lovely of her because if I forget to eat due to being too focused, I can have a difficult time of things later on in the day. At midday, my co-host for the session, Alex Manners arrived. He is also neurodivergent and has been on the television programme ‘The Undatables’. Alex is very similar to me but also very different too. For example, he loves wearing bright colours
because he feels he has a bright personality. For me bright colours hurt my eyes and I like to wear darker colours and that is just one of the many ways two autistic individuals can be different from one another.
We were shown to the Helen Martin Studio and we were amazed at what a lovely space it was. Bethany Evans had laid out the space in such a welcoming way. She had prepared a number of resources for the session including: clipboards, pens, notebooks and even provided a cart of sensory toys to aid concentration and reduce stress. This made me forget any nerves I had prior to the training, and I felt very excited to be working with such welcoming and warm individuals.

The training experience

We met the learners outside the Benugo bar. We then took them outside, to
the front of the Arts Centre. This is a building that they know very well, a
building that they see every day but we wanted them to experience their
building in a new light. We wanted them to experience Warwick Arts Centre
through the eyes of a Neurodivergent customer.
So, after some quick health and safety notices and our first group photo we
set off to explore. One of the very first thing everyone noticed was the
importance of signage. Many of us have other conditions as well as Autism
such as Dyspraxia or Dyslexia and so signage can be incredibly important for
wayfinding in a new environment. I loved how engaged our learners were. We
had never met them before but by the end of the tour of the building they were
joyfully explaining their roles to us and pointing out the improvements that
could be made to the building for enhancing the customer experience. Two of
the group members even successfully demonstrated an access clash during
the tour.

An access clash occurs when one person’s needs directly contradict another. For example, in this case our team were enthusiastically playing the Xylophone with such glee outside the music centre demonstrating their enjoyment of the instrument but many of our group were walking away with our hands over our ears because we couldn’t stand the din they were making. That is an access clash in action. We don’t want to stop them from making music or enjoying the making of music but we do want to remove the barrier so that we don’t experience pain in our ears, for those of us who are sensitive to sound. How would we manage this? Well, we could wear ear defenders as one option or another option would be a clearly communicated
schedule of the time that the instruments can be used so that everyone can still enjoy them but sound sensitive individuals can choose a different space to be in when it is too noisy.

Once the tour was over, we gathered our findings and summarised the experience. Many learners had never seen their building in that way before and were still talking about it when we moved on to the next section which was Alex’s Talk.
Alex’s presentation is about his life growing up with Asperger’s. He wants everyone to understand that Autistic children become Autistic adults and once you have met one person with Autism you have only met one person with autism because we are all different. We demonstrated how Alex’s experiences applied in a theatre setting and some of the learners were so
moved – almost to tears, due to experiences raising their own children or having family members with autistic children.

I always say that you never know how far your act of kindness will go. It is like a ripple effect once you start talking about your experiences in an authentic and meaningful way They can be used to help others who are, up to this point, unaware of these
situations but do want to know and help and support others. When sharing your own life stories, who knows how far your teaching and kindness will go?
We introduced the tasks for session 2 and session 6. We then asked the learners to help us to co-create session 2. We do not want to tell people how ‘to do’ access. We want access to be ever evolving and responsive to the needs of the person in front of us. At present, the people in front of us were our learners and we were creating a bespoke package with them to help address their learning needs. They wished to focus on communication for session 2 and I won’t give any of our secrets away or spoil the surprise for the learning team but I am so excited to deliver our second session on February 5 th at Warwick Arts Centre.

I just wanted to say a massive thank you to all the learners for their engagement with the first training session. I truly believe there is no-such course like this at present and that we have a truly unique learning opportunity.
I would also like to thank: Alex Manners for his incredibly moving and engaging talk and Liz Leck for all her support during the day (it really is true that I need a full ‘get in’ and ‘get out’ team for these event!); Open Theatre Company for all their support throughout my life and supporting the development of the application; Arts Council England for funding such an amazing, empowering and validating first Neurodivergent accessibility training course; The Firestarter Foundation – Andrew Bishop and Paul Haslem, for encouraging me and giving me the skills that I need to succeed in business.

… And last by no means least Andrea and Bethany for their kindness and support in ensuring the session ran smoothly and all the dedication and planning that went into the day in-between times. We really are looking forward to session 2 and we can’t wait to come back to Warwick Arts Centre again.