The Middletown Centre for Autism Podcast
The Middletown Podcast features interviews with leading thinkers and practitioners across the autistic and autism community. Conversations are autism-affirming and neurodiversity-informed with a focus on the lived experience and knowledge of our community. Episodes highlight issues impacting autistic people and we share ideas for family members and school staff who are providing support.
The Middletown Centre for Autism Podcast
Steven Murray – Storytelling and Representation
In the latest Middletown Podcast, we speak to Steven Murray - creative, storyteller and Engagement Officer with Aspire Ireland. We discuss his journey through education, his creative life and how he feels about autism representation.
Welcome to the Middletown Podcast. I'm Kat Hughes, I'm a researcher at Middletown and I'm also autistic. In this episode I'm talking to Stephen Murray. Stephen is a creator, filmmaker and storyteller. I've known Stephen for years and he's always been so creative in so many different ways. He's also an engagement officer with ASPIRE, the Autism Spectrum Association of Ireland. We chat about Stephen's time in education and how miscommunication and the wrong supports can have a huge impact. We also talk about Stephen's creative life, including social creativity, and his thoughts about autism representation in the media. We take some tangents in this one to what ADHD people are likely to do, but I hope you enjoy our meandering chat. So, stephen, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I suppose I wanted to start with a very sort of basic early question. So how would you describe your younger self?
Speaker 2:I've used the term demon child uh before. But um, no, to be exact, like I, I was um, I was undiagnosed on dhd in the night in the late 80s, early 90s, so it's just support wasn't there, knowledge wasn't there for my parents. So like I don't fault anyone for my upbringing and but yeah, I was pretty wild like I. I think I. I was brought to mass for the first time when I started communion classes for my communion because I would just be up and down the aisles like not keeping me, couldn't keep me seated, had to be moving, like difficulty, staying quiet, that kind of thing. Like all of my literally all of my parents' friends knew that I was obsessed with Transformers as a child because you couldn't get me to leave the house without one in my hand, because it was something I could do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that is very possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I definitely didn't get the frequent early autistic signal of is a pleasure to have in class. Like the teachers were usually impressed with intelligence. Like I think in first class I read every book my school had and there was this, actually this or my. I was kind of annoyed at my mom because I found out this story about myself last year. That is really interesting that so I switched schools in between junior to senior infants. I actually switched into the I think it was the second educate together school in ireland. But in the like interview with the principal where, like it was my parents and then I was off playing as a child, I would have been four, not no, I would have been five, not six, um, and like one of the questions my parents were asked because I was sitting there reading a mr man book and the teacher was just like, oh, and which of you thought steven had to read? Um, and and the teacher was just like, oh, and which of you thought Stephen had a read? And both my parents were dyslexic when and are dyslexic, my mom very profoundly so she learned to read when she was in her teens. She made it through school with her best friend sitting beside her reading. If she was asked to read in class, deirdre would read to her under her breath. So and she would repeat it, oh my goodness. And so then I was six, going into senior entrance. It's like which? Which of you? It's like my parents said, oh we, we thought he was taught in school and it's just like they don't teach junior infants how to read. So, like I was from the beginning, obviously like way hyperlexic, um, clearly intelligent kid, um.
Speaker 2:I found out, apparently the like, when I was first getting assessed. So I got my diagnosis of adhd at about seven and then I got my autism diagnosis when I was 18. So like it's kind of. It's why, which is one of the reasons why I kind of recommend to people, when you get your first diagnosis, don't close your mind that that's your only diagnosis. That like very regularly, uh you, there can be other things going on that might also need support or might need different support, like I all through my education, like I went through school on computer from the age of 10, um, which gave birth to a really interesting point that one of one of my good friends has a master's in english lit, and we were just talking about english and essays and I realized I've never written an essay I couldn't edit, that like, because they've all been typed.
Speaker 2:Um, if I finished an essay I could go back and do another draft. That like I've never written an essay on paper and pen. I'm like I was just like when I had that light bulb moment. I'm like Jesus, that must be. That's so much harder that I'd never even considered that other people are writing essays on paper with a pen. So yeah, like my like I was the smart. I was the kind of smart, very mouthy and like as a very young child I'd give out to people for smoking because it was bad for them. So why would they do it? But it's like I I was a three-year-old telling a 40-year-old not to smoke because it was bad for him.
Speaker 1:Like very sweet in retrospect, possibly not so sweet at the time if it was your uncle in hindsight kind of pretty funny.
Speaker 2:Like if social media was a thing in the 80s I absolutely would have gone viral. Sadly the tech wasn't around.
Speaker 1:That's a shame. And then, well, you mentioned the tech. You're obviously very creative, and have you always been creative.
Speaker 2:I actually thought back on this a couple of years ago that I had taken a workshop on writing again because I was thinking about taking it up during lockdown because I hadn't written anything in a good long while and I realised they gave like a survey of questions of like your inspirations and have you and a question they asked in it that I then realised, oh wow, that was early. They gave like a survey of questions of like your inspirations and have you and I really one a question they they asked in it that I then realized, oh wow, that was early. That was were you the one that came up with games as a child? Uh, which I was so like with cousins and friends, I always came up with the game we played. We were playing as kids and it's only like as I realized then after doing that survey, like oh yeah, that's world building and it's like casting roles. Uh, I'm like, oh wow, yeah, that's. Yeah, I have always been creative but, like my sister's, very artistic. So I should be careful because this is not as much artistic. My sister's not autistic, she's dyslexic but not autistic, but she's very artistic and like I have a few paintings on my wall that she had painted. But after the.
Speaker 2:How my secondary school worked is, first year is you just do a module of every subject and then at the end it's going into. Second year is when you choose what you're doing for the junior cert. And at the end of my module of art the teacher told me not to study art, which everyone gets every like, and I'm for the. For the listeners cat had a very shocked reaction there on her face, but lots people always have that kind of reaction to it. Like oh my god, how did? No, that was good advice. Like I would not have passed the junior search. Or leaving certain like I'm I'm not that kind of creative. Like I wish I could draw, it'd be great.
Speaker 2:People always said like oh, anyone can draw, you can know. Like I I I've been to film school twice. Like I've studied creative stuff my whole life, I'm just not a drawer. Like my creativity is words, it's not pictures. Well, actually I say it's not pictures. I was a cameraman for 15 years, so it is kind of. But like I'm not a drawer, so that wouldn't have been a thing. But yeah, I've always been creative in kind of different ways. Like I would come up with the games we play. The one that always impresses people is I managed to not do German homework for a year and a half in senior cycle, secondary school, without my teacher noticing. I just talk my way out of it every time. Um it, it's very rare, like for, as a cheeky a child as I was like, I was very good at talking my way out of things and I could always tell stories, I could always sell it well and I loved acting.
Speaker 1:Uh, so yeah, always pretty creative that creative, that's a skill to have, and to know how to use it is very impressive.
Speaker 2:But then I ended up teaching myself Irish for the last, maybe six months of sixth year Because, so, like, I did ordinary level Irish, because I went to the Gaelteach five years in a row so I sat my leaving cert speaking fluent Irish but I could barely read or write it, because the Gaelteach teaches you to speak, it doesn't teach you to read Irish or whatever, and you're learning colloquial Irish rather than book Irish. So I was doing the ordinary level, so I, in that you're given you have to do two activities from a list of six on the book. So it's like a postcard, a conversation, a story, whatever. So the teacher gave us. So six months before the leaving cert, the teacher gave us homework of doing like, okay, tonight, do me a postcard, say, and one of the possibilities is a conversation which I it was looked upon as the hardest because it's basically it's 15, it's 30 lines, one line like 15 lines for two characters, back and forth.
Speaker 2:Um, so it's the most. I'd say it's kind of the most difficult if you, if your level of Irish is low, but because my difficulty was reading and writing it, not speaking it. Uh, I, I asked, asked, miss, I'm not going to do the postcard, can I do a co a cora conversation? Instead? She kicked me out of the class, told me to go to the library. Uh, I got the second highest mark in that class in irish and the only person that scored higher than me was a person that dropped down.
Speaker 1:Wow, doesn't it like it just shows you that sort of double empathy piece where you know there's such a misunderstanding in communication where, yeah, she couldn't put herself in your shoes and didn't understand and wasn't willing to understand where you were coming from?
Speaker 2:oh, it's like, miss. You're asking me to do an irrelevant task. Can I do a relevant one instead?
Speaker 1:get out of my class wow, I want to learn in a different way. Get out yeah well, was there within that time then? Was there someone who was very kind of, supportive of you and of your, your interests? Did you find?
Speaker 2:My dad was very supportive of me, kind of as a kid and then also as growing up, because he grew up, like I said earlier, he was dyslexic. He had a lot of trouble in school Like he had kind of scars on his knuckles from the rulers Because like he, my dad, my dad would have been in secondary school in the late 50s, early 60s, so that was the. He was just being bold or being whatever. So, um, but I he was always very supportive of me at interests like I was big into.
Speaker 2:I've always kind of been quite into like I, one of my I always for a while I had difficulty explaining special interest, my special interest, to people because for a good while it was just knowledge, like I just love reading, learning about anything like to this day I can talk. If a person is passionate about a subject I can sit and talk to them for hours about it. And that he, my dad, used to bring me to a bunch of like astronomy ireland meets back in the day he brought me to a bunch of ctyi and gifted children of ireland um meetings and seminars and all that it's so lovely that your dad was that open to kind of feeding your knowledge.
Speaker 1:That's really gorgeous. And so then you went from school to studying sort of filmmaking.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was in. I had, like I had various dream jobs throughout my kind of childhood and teens and then it was in fourth year. We had a film studies module. I just fell in love, like I'd always loved movies, but I'd never considered because like that was, that was before, like there were some movies made in Ireland, but it was before it really became a location for that, so it wasn't. I didn't think of it as like a possibility. It was kind of like Jim Sheridan, like his early work that kind of started, made it a possibility to like then brought international attention to filmmaking in Ireland. So I that's when I felt like oh, this could be an actual thing looked into it.
Speaker 2:At the time there was only one degree level course in production in Ireland. Trinity had film studies, but that's kind of theory, comprehension, critiquing etc. Which wasn't my thing. I was looking for filmmaking. So I applied to Bally and do like clash of dueling, cluster dueling being my preferred choice, mostly because of location like I'm originally from swords and like body firm it's a lot further than like north side. So and like body firm it's great for animation, but at the time dueling would kind of have more of a so, and like Body Firm, it's great for animation, but at the time Doolig kind of had more of a filmmaking reputation. So, yeah, so I went to Colossus, doolig dropped out halfway through second year, so second year of a two-year course.
Speaker 2:I regret doing this now in hindsight, but so we got halfway through second year. We had spent half of the year making a three-minute short which we then weren't being graded on, which apparently, like when we were finishing first year, and this is apparently a continuous thing. At the time I'll say this was 2006. The course may have changed significantly since then, but we were told by the previous second years, like near the end, they'll ask you about the course. Everyone mentioned that you spend half the year working on a short you're not graded on. Like it's insane. So like every year tells the next year to say it, which we did, and I dropped out because it's like this is ridiculous. I think my autistic sense of justice kicked in and so I dropped out, just started. Like I realized I would be at a further point in my career if I didn't do this course and I just got a job at a secondary school. This is where we get, this is where you get kind of get into the meat of it. I I.