What is it about?
Drama practitioners and psychologists worked together to evaluate a new approach to ameliorate autism in children using improvisatory drama.
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Why is it important?
‘Imagining Autism’ was an AHRC funded interdisciplinary collaboration between Drama, Psychology and the Tizard Centre at the University of Kent (September 2011-March 2014). The project investigated the potential of drama to be used as an intervention for autism to facilitate communication, social interaction and imagination. How far could participatory performance practices impact upon these areas of deficit, often referred to as the ‘triad of impairments’ in autism? As these three areas are fundamental to performance practice (what we refer to as the drama ‘triad’ of communication, interaction and imagination), the central hypothesis was that exposure to a programme of practical workshops could effect positive change, facilitating language, sociability, empathy (theory of mind) and creativity
Perspectives
I was the project manager for the Tizard research team for this study, and then conducted follow-up research looking at the experiences of the interdisciplinary team and the practical, logistic and communication challenges.
Dr Jennifer Leigh
University of Kent
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Imagining Autism: Feasibility of a drama-based intervention on the social, communicative and imaginative behaviour of children with autism, Autism, September 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1362361317710797.
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