Autism, Art and Confidence: Finding Our Voice

In today's episode we discuss Skills Club, a club within our ARTiculate programme for young people aged 24-30.

Join Tara, Sophia, Dave, Jordan, Stephanos and Flo as they share how Skills Club has helped them develop confidence, creativity, friendships and practical skills through art, volunteering and community projects.

From autism and social anxiety to employment, independence and finding a place to belong, this honest and uplifting conversation explores the real impact that a supportive and inclusive community can have on young disabled adults.

We also hear about the creative projects members have produced, including embroidery, ceramics, textiles and upcycling, and discover how Skills Club helps participants build skills for volunteering, work and everyday life.

To find out more about Skills Club please contact Flo Alfrey on 020 3743 2326, or email flo@communityfocus.co.uk

00:01:18 - Intro
00:02:00 - What's going on?
00:04:44 - What is Skills Club?
00:06:42 - Philanthropy
00:09:09 - What Skills club means to us
00:13:25 - Favourite projects
00:19:54 - What Community Focus means to us
00:22:19 - How to get involved
00:22:54 - Our passions
00:26:38 - Final Thoughts

Project Managers: Andrea Rai & Phil Powell
Editor: Phil Powell

Huge thanks to the National Lottery Reaching Communities Fund for supporting our Dis-labled podcast. Learn more about their amazing work: https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

All enquiries: podcast@communityfocus.co.uk
Website: https://www.communityfocus.co.uk/

Theme Music: Rastko Rasic & the students of Community FocusOther Music: Jazzy Frenchy by ⁠⁠⁠Benjamin Tissot

Transcript

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Phillip R 0:05

Community focus. Community focused. We're here for you. I was one of you. At five o'clock. Yes, but London. A weekend with you. We're here for you. Yes. Hooray! Hooray!

unknown 0:32

Hooray! Hooray!

Gila 0:39

Community Focus is an art centre for children and adults with disabilities. We are based in Fabower Bonnet, North London and offers collection of creative and well-being activities for all ages.

Tara 0:57

In this room we have Flo.

Stephanos 1:02

Bill Stev Sophia Stephanus.

Tara 1:08

Happy girl. Jordan and Tara.

Intro

Sophia 1:18

In today's episode we discuss Skills Club, a club within our articulate programme for young people aged 24 to 30. We talk about what Skills Club is, what it means to us, the community it provides and the various products we have made from our own creative endeavours. Skills Club is very special because it promotes community inclusion and helps members progress in volunteering and work through art, crafts and design. We also have information about how you can get involved. Lastly, we feature five members of Skills Club who speak about their passions and what Skills Club has done for them.

What's going on?

Tara 2:00

Uh hi there, my name is Tara. Um I have been on this podcast before. I talked about transgender issues and my identity as being a trans guy.

Flo 2:29

Hi everyone, I'm Flo. I'm a project manager here at Community Focus. I also teach art and textiles, and I love uh managing the 18 to 30 year old program called Articulate. I'm really proud of the work we've done here at CF with the Skills Club, which is a weekly session for students to learn transferable skills and um develop their artwork.

Dave 2:58

Uh I'm Dave, I did Skills Club here at Community Focus. I'm a musician and a 3D model maker, and I find things that most people find boring or don't really care about. I see the beauty in that stuff and I wanna pay tribute to it with uh in a creative way and uh make a model of it.

Jordan 3:20

Hi, my name is Jordan. I love gardening, three jobs I did like I did weeding as well, and I did um mowing as well, I did swimming, little grass, it was really hard work because when it's raining, because it was too wet to do gardening, but I get get used to it now, and on Friday I did um mowing as well on the high road whetstone because they were very proud of me saying like thanks for doing that, Jordan. I was like, Oh thank you very much. Then they made me tea, and then and then that's it.

Stephanos 4:06

Hi everyone, my name is Stephanas and and I live in Terrap and Clean. I love community focus and I love the Friar Air Road.

Sophia 4:19

Hi, uh I'm Sophia. I've been coming to Community Focus for just over a year now. I like art and I do a lot of ceramics and I also like painting and drawing. Um I also work as an expert by experience delivering training and autism for NHS staff.

What is Skills Club?

Tara 4:45

Skills Club is um a class within uh community focused that allows us to creatively collaborate with one another to create interesting products and uh form a nice sense of like community and uh with with our teamwork together. We dabble in all sorts of different kinds of mediums and art, and we've sold all sorts of products. We've sold shirts, silk scarves, we've made eye masks and coasters, those are my personal favourite, and uh we've also I believe sold some greetings cards too, and even just also general original art at times too. And these products can be found in the different shops that we've collaborated with, such as Philanthropy London, some market stalls, haven't we? Yeah, we've done some market stalls from different festivals, such as the uh I believe like the Summer Venge festival in Cherry Tree Woods. Yeah, in Cherry Tree Woods, and and also uh our own our own exhibitions as well. And of course, we shall now move on to Flo, who is the head of the Skills Club and the main organizer.

Flo 6:03

Hi everyone, so we set Skills Club up um just because we felt there was a real need for our students to have a space to come and as Tara said be part of the community here, but also um share experiences with um maybe work experience or volunteering experiences and that next life transition from moving up after education uh starts to end. So um, as Tara explained really well, it's um also a place to collaborate creatively, and we also have an online shop which is going really well.

Philanthropy

Sophia 6:42

You mentioned collaborating. Um we collaborated before with philanthropy. What was that like?

Flo 6:49

So we were so pleased that uh the community interests company philanthropy in N13 really loved the work that we were doing and um not only sold our products in their store, they also funded a 12-week uh project in which we um selected denim that wasn't selling in their shop and took it, brought it back here to Friary Park and upcycled each piece with embroidery techniques. So it was a really sustainable uh fashion project, and the students designed their own range which they then displayed in the window display in the store.

Sophia 7:31

It was a great project. I really enjoyed it, and I was also really happy to hear that every piece got sold as well. Everyone brought their own like unique designs and their own unique techniques.

Tara 7:41

Yeah, exactly what Sophia said. I had never tried embroidery before then, and it was a really good way to experiment and kind of expand my own skills, and it made me so happy also to hear that every piece got sold, and I was also very proud of the works I created because I made a lot of pieces with birds like peacocks and cranes and herons. So I hope whoever is uh is uh bought them enjoys those pieces uh well. We also like did some volunteering on the day when we uh bought the denim pieces over. And we helped set up everything in the shop. We set them up for like the windows for so people can like see our new products, and um I also helped some customers as well. And on the day, one of them also got solved, uh, so that was pretty exciting. It was a very, very lovely environment to be. Like, if you've not been to Philanthropy London in Enfield, I definitely suggest you go because not only are the people that work there and like the shop owners that are super super sweet people, it's just a generally really nice environment that's full of like really like lovely, like a lot of even old school products, and if you're a fan of very bright colours, they specialise in that as well.

What Skills club means to us

Dave 9:10

Okay, Dave, what what Skills Clubs mean to you? I think it's an environment for people who are all creative and um have a passion for different kinds of art and stuff like that. And they can all sort of uh meet on some sort of mutual ground and take part in something they can all do together and try to learn from that and maybe uh adapt to it, try to use it in some of their own artistic journey and uh maybe perhaps get to know each other in some cases. But all right, Jordan, what does Skills Club mean to you?

Jordan 9:42

It means like art, walk, and nature, things like that, like to do something, like community focus, everything. What's what's this skills will mean to you?

Tara 9:58

I find it a very great space to interact with the community and talk to people, and the sessions themselves I find also very fun because I also get to try new things that I typically won't try on my own when it comes to my own art. Like for example, like I've mentioned before, the embroidery and also more traditional painting as well. But again, the main aspects that I really enjoy of Skills Club is being able to interact with the people around me, because I typically don't really have a lot of second spaces to really go to. So Skills Club is just a very nice, quiet, and also very inclusive place for me to interact with people, and also being of a demographic that tends to be discriminated against, it's great to have like the non-judgmental atmosphere where I can be myself and just talk to people and have fun, essentially.

Jordan 11:05

Um, why art?

Tara 11:07

Why art? That's a good question, actually. I've enjoyed doing art since I was a child. It was always a way for me to express feelings that was very hard to articulate, especially as an autistic kid. And art was just it's just another way of like expressing your language, really. It was a way to talk in a way that made sense to me, and if someone understood it, then they understood it, and if they didn't, well, they'll at least hopefully look at a pretty picture in the end of the day. The main things I also enjoy depicting in art are like some of the ideas I have with different fantasy worlds, because I love fantasy, I love science fiction, and just sort of exploring like different worlds and character ideas as well for different stories. I always just find it a very satisfying and very like fun thing to work on because I just love thinking and trying out different uh ideas for different characters. I love drawing monsters. Uh I was always like a fan of like Godzilla and such as a kid. I enjoy drawing birds and um reptiles and also bugs as well. Birds are my favorite though. I love birds. I enjoy drawing dinosaurs, and I also draw enjoy drawing more cartoony things as well. Stefanos, what do you enjoy most about Community Focus and Skills Club?

Stephanos 12:41

Helping the class to take orders about hot drinks, and of course, serving and writing the names to remember who hot drink to have a hot chocolate or tea, or black currant, or orange quash. The volunteer was really good and thanks for that.

Sophia 13:07

Skills club is just a really nice environment to go to. There's not a lot of places that are for people with autism, so it feels like a kind of unique place to go where everyone is like understanding uh and non-judgmental, and I really like making art and it helps me build my confidence

Favourite projects

Sophia 13:25

and my skills. My favourite project was probably the Denim project because I really enjoy embroidery. At the moment we're doing kind of Japanese-inspired, nature-inspired artworks that we're uh using to put on eye masks, um, and I've really enjoyed that because I made a a lot of different pieces. I did a lot of trees. Dave, what is your favourite project that you've done at Skills Club?

Dave 13:50

Well, to be honest, I haven't really done anything that memorable and I wasn't happy with most of the stuff that I produced in there, but um uh I think on the second week I came in, I made a fire alarm and it had nothing to do with the lesson. But uh I thought that we were doing individual projects, but I think probably that one, even though it wasn't very good because it was the first one I did in years, I'd say that was probably the best thing that I could have done. It's throwing away now, but I mean that was the best skills club that I've ever done, and I didn't want it to end. Because you just because like when you're when when you're doing your own projects and you're in your comfort zone, you really need as much time to try and get it right so you can show it off to everyone. But uh yeah, that that was my most memorable thing uh that we did that I did.

Flo 14:35

Can I just also add to that, Dave, just for the listeners' benefit, that the fire alarm 3D model that you created was absolutely incredible and uh it was flawless, it was accurately made and created in a very technical and professional way that just blew everybody away. So um I think you're your own worst critic.

Phil P 14:57

Dave, can you just explain what what you make the fire alarms out of and why you actually do it? It's something quite amazing to see.

Dave 15:05

Yeah, so there's this stationary shop called Ryman, and they sell sort of like thick cards and it can come in different colours. And I got white cards, and that is usually what I make. That's like the foundation I use to make everything, the structure of every every 3D model. It's uh 600 microns, it means it's very strong, it can still fold, but it's strong enough to be you know durable for a model like that that's not made out of real plastic, and uh that's why that's what I made that with. But uh I've been doing that kind of thing almost my whole life, and it came from uh you know having being autistic and having these special interests, and that was one of them for my whole life. And uh it kind of started because I wanted a lot of different things growing up that I was really interested in, but I couldn't, you know, so I just had to I randomly got the idea to just make it once out of paper, and it just like that's been my journey the whole time, and I still do it, and I'm trying to make a business from it. Tara, what's your uh favourite projects being in Skills Club so far?

Tara 16:07

I think the embroidery one was one of my personal favourites because that allowed me to expand a little bit more in my artistic ability, and I gained a new love for the medium of embroidery, and it was just a very fun thing to experiment, and I was also even working at it in home because I enjoyed doing it so much. I think a close second would also be when we were working with Japanese themed pieces, because uh that allowed us to do a lot of research into a different culture and like the art style, and I ended up looking a lot into Japanese um birds and flowers, and I just found it a very like fun thing to do. We also went to the British Museum to look at some of the Japanese objects they had there, and their collection was very, very pretty. And uh yeah, I guess those are my two favourite uh sessions.

Flo 17:12

So one thing that we found um has been really beneficial um is that the students in the Skills Club are also given opportunities here at Community Focus to volunteer in the classes um and outside of community focus as well. Um so everyone's done amazing work um in the community and you see everyone's um social skills and team skills um build a lot from that volunteering. Has anyone had any volunteering opportunities that they really want to share?

Tara 17:50

So one thing that you recommended, I believe, I believe it was you recommending that, uh flow, was uh a volunteering opportunity to help plant reeds in uh in some wetlands that were constructed here. I took that opportunity because I love nature, and not only was it like a really like satisfying and good like volunteering opportunity to do, because I was helping like the local ecosystem, I did also take part in other like in other volunteering um by that same group that were trying to help improve the ecology of London's waterways. So that one was a very, very good thing to uh find, and if I'm able to find more the opportunities by them, I I would love to like do more of it.

Sophia 18:52

I started um volunteering because I got an email which was basically like a newsletter, um, and they were asking if um anyone wanted to like volunteer and I thought that would be a good idea. So um earlier this year I was um doing every Monday um ceramic classes. I was volunteering in them, um, which was good because I already had skills in ceramics. It's probably my favourite kind of art form. Um so I was able to apply the skills that I already knew to um to the class and help students with their work. Then I started doing some Wednesdays as well. Uh we did the nature group where every every week we did a different kind of project, but it was all inspired by nature.

Jordan 19:34

Uh we get paid for gardening. Sometimes I did two hours of jobs. I do three jobs a week. We do like Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. Um, like um mowing. Really, really good for me because I'm proud of myself.

What Community Focus means to us

Tara 19:56

I also want to add, in regards to the Skills Club and Articulate and Community Focus in general, it's very big uh pro in just being a very inclusive space. It is first and foremost a space for disabled people and having letting us have a community with one another, but it is also inclusive of people than also just being disabled people as well. There's a lot of variety and diversity in the people here, and the biggest thing is that we are uh encouraged to just ultimately be ourselves because that's basically what everyone should strive to be, just learning to be okay with ourselves. And yeah, I can't be more uh thankful for such a inclusive and friendly environment because I really appreciate having like a space that also accepts me for who I am and also my background. And also, um, for the most part, people have also been very nice to me about uh me being transgender. And on the personal side, as someone who also dealt with a lot of anxiety, especially with people, so social anxiety, the skills club has been a good way for me to kind of like build up my people skills and become a bit more okay with talking to others, and I've kind of found I'm not too bad at it when I'm able to uh talk uh properly anyway. So yeah.

Dave 21:22

My favourite part of community focus is the staff. I've gotta be honest. Uh I find it so easy to talk to them all the time. I'd I'd as someone who's not really I'm not big on social interaction really any anymore. And uh every time I'm around them, like Phil, Andrea, Flo, it's uh everybody, uh I'm just so used to them that I feel like I can just talk to them and not feel awkward. And uh I'd my favourite part would of the of the lesson would always be at the end. Uh because I'd always go into the office and have a conversation with Flo at least to catch up. And then also you Yes, uh Maria and Vicky would also be there, and uh I find Maria so relatable because she's just not like the rest of them either. So I haven't really been able to necessarily communicate much with the other students in the class, but uh I'm sure they they all seem like nice people.

How to get involved

Tara 22:19

Now a question for Flo how would someone um not within Skills Club be able to find it?

Flo 22:28

Okay, so you can go on to the Community Focus website and um complete an application form, or you can email myself flow at communityfocus.co.uk, or give us a call on the on the phone line as well, and we can talk you through the referral process.

Tara 22:46

Thank you very much.

Our passions

Sophia 22:54

So we've spoken a lot about community focus and our interests. What are people's passions? Uh Dave, what are your passions?

Dave 23:03

My passions are alarms, whether they're fire alarms, burglar alarms, whether they're mains powered, battery-powered, photoelectric ionisation, just anything to do with that stuff. And uh going to people's houses and looking at what which ones they've got and uh asking them about what year they put it in, and like uh I think everybody should know everything there is to know about smoke alarms. Otherwise, uh I'm a 3D model maker. It's always been a hobby and it's something I want to do for life and turn it into a uh business.

Tara 23:32

Um Jordan, I'd love to know what are your passions?

Jordan 23:36

Um my passions are doing gardening and um I I like to listen to the rap music, dancing as well. I'm a good dancer, that's why I like dancing makes me feel good, makes me feel makes me feel proud. That's it. Stefanoff. Yes. What are you interested in?

Stephanos 23:59

Okay, my interesting it is the art to drawing vehicles, to drawing about transportation, and of course to draw and nice things, a lot of favorite things about New York City and the old memories in the 1990s and 1970s and 1980s. Tara! What is your interesting?

Tara 24:37

I enjoy animal care. Whenever I'm able to care for animals, I love doing it. I also enjoy gardening, like a certain person next to me. And I find it a very good form of exercise. And I also enjoy reading, um, specifically comic books, but I'm allowed to be a little bit naughty. I enjoy I just enjoy comics. I love seeing the art that goes into them. I think some of the storylines can be really interesting. And I enjoy watching uh cartoons as well. I may be an adult, but I still adore cartoons because I again love the art that goes into them. And uh my current favorite is the amazing digital circus. I like books, comics, uh video games, TV shows, cartoons, and I also enjoy music, but they're they tend to be mostly sad kinds of music. But that's just what I like. Sophia, what are some of your interests or hobbies?

Sophia 25:37

My biggest interest is art and pretty much every single form of art. Like I think I've tried almost everything. My favourite at the moment is sculpture with ceramics. I started it over a year ago, and I just really like how satisfying and really soothing it is. I find it really relaxing, and I have like so many ideas, and just being able to actually do them and watching it come to life is really, really enjoyable. Another thing I've started doing recently is felting. I make like armature models of different sculptures, and then I will wrap it with wool, and then I basically stab it until it makes the shape that I want it to make, and I do lots of other arts as well. And then I I also really like Pokemon. Today's final thoughts are Um I really enjoyed today um and speaking about and what community focus is like for us. Um it's been a good distraction, and uh yeah.

Stephanos 26:35

Yes, I did really enjoy.

Final Thoughts

Stephanos 26:38

It was very good. I really excited.

Jordan 26:42

It's really good to meet your people in here. It was very nice and perfect.

Tara 26:50

It was great to listen and talk to other people here and catch up with them as well. And yeah, I just highly enjoy the sense of community we have.

Dave 27:00

It was good to uh get to know everybody in here, find out what their hobbies and interests are, what motivated them and got them to where they are today. It's good uh finally seeing them from a different perspective.

Flo 27:14

So I just need a minute, but I'm gonna get really emotional. Sorry. It's okay, you can let it flow. It's a good thing, but yeah, I always get like this. Sorry guys, I might just need a minute. Um, yeah, okay. So I just want to say a huge well done to all the students who've participated today, and throughout the Skills Club journey on the last couple of years, um, there have been times where we haven't had funding to run the group, and some students have had to pay themselves, but they've all shown so much dedication, and I'm inspired every week by the students' talents, skills, the group dynamic, the collaboration, the community spirit, and um it I it's really it really moves me how how much talent there is in the room every week and how many barriers our students face and overcome all the time, which we haven't spoken on that much today, but uh they all should be really proud of themselves.

Phillip R 28:31

We're here for you I want a view at five o'clock. A week in review, we're here for you, yeah. Hooray Hooray Hooray Hooray