To David Morris, Disability Advisor to Mayor of London

29.9.07



Dear David Morris,

I attended the “Politics Of Autism” Conference on Wed 12th Sept. I came up to the front desk where you were sitting at the beginning of the meeting and asked you about where to put leaflets- I don`t know if you remember this.

I finally decided to put the leaflets about our Self-Help Autistic and Dyslexic Garden Sculpture project next to the food at the other end of the hall.

I meant to give you a leaflet personaly but somehow didn`t.

_____

I worry about this project and the Community of people who have gathered over the last seven years through a Duty of Care, because the project will soon be closing.

It is a project that works in cycles; of laying down traces, revisiting and remembering. The involvement is active, practical and creative and in this way positive. It is a real space that we occupy, move around and have an impact on.

The theory and practice come together in this way, of how we involve ourselves, take responsibility and grow. There are problems sometimes- misunderstandings and tight spots- as well as moments, caught in glances, laughter and simple acts of hospitality, of real expansion. All these episodes are part of what it means to work things out in a community. This is part of the adaptaive shape of any group as it informs itself through time.

In this way, slowly, through our spatial projects where we make dwellings, shelters, pathways and through our Gardening projects, we come together out of our many diverse experiences.

After seven years of occupancy we face eviction. That eviction is now set for March 31st 2008. The land is owned by NCH and is a small annex to the side of their Highbury Site. I found it as a disused space and proposed the project which it has now grown to become. However neither me nor the other members could have known then quite what that would entail.

I have experienced a way of being through this project that I could not have imagined possible though perhaps it was lodged somewhere in my deepest memories where connections flow and are not interupted by an onslaught of images and words. Any place that sustains itself also sustains the lives that are a part of it. The meaning deepens over time.

I know from this project that people need to be “embedded” in a context where they have valued roles that are interdependant in order to live from their own life experiences. This is a crucial requirement for human Well-Being and tackles through engaged solutions rather than the naming of problems, what it means to have quality of life.

Many people with disabilites suffer the consequences of social isolation.
The consequent mental health problems which they may develop in later life then become the real issue and the disability an inadvertant trigger to these problems rather than simply another way of sensing the world that points to the true nature of human diversity and adaptation.


I think that people with a Spectrum Disorder- Autism, Dyslexia, ADHD- need places that they can make their own in order to draw on a sense of Community and to springboard themselves into other realms of action, thought and emotional Well-Being. Such places can act as “Holding Spaces” that build up positivity like a battery charger and through a series of deeply rooted valued associations, can infact address and prevent the day to day over-loading which is an imprisonement for so many people on the Spectrum. A support system of positive endorsements is crucial in re-diverting these everyday triggers to stress that otherwise isolate and negate people and allows unstead a different pattern to emerge; that of integration.

You are the Disability Advisor to the Mayor of London.

I would like you to ask the Mayor to take notice of the points I have raised in this letter and to make available- As a Matter of Urgency- spaces for disabled people and specifically for people with Spectrum Disorders, in which they can create their own initiatives and in this way address the real capacities that they hold within. I believe society will learn and gain back from such an endorsement and that this could have far-reaching affects.


Sincerely,


Ruth Solomon
Founder and Co-ordinator of “Memory Gardens” Autistic Sculpture Project