CRAE in the News & Events

CRAE in the News

News

In January 2019, DE-ENIGMA was featured in “How robots can help autistic children better understand their emotions”on UCL Institute of Education’s YouTube channel (with 2,400 subscribers).

In February 2019, Anna Remington’s research was featured in The Irish News ahead of the NI Science Festival.

In July 2019, The Project Repository Journal published an article about the DE-ENIGMA project.

6th CRAE Christmas Card Competition!

CRAE launched their 6th Christmas Card Design Competition in November 2018, receiving hundreds of entries from autism schools across Greater London and beyond. The overall winning design (from students at Queensmill School) was printed as our CRAE Xmas card and shared with over 750 of our colleagues, collaborators, friends, families and, importantly, all our participants and those with whom we work.

Events

Evening of CRAEtivity: Celebrating autistic people in the arts

In December 2018, CRAE’s very own Artist-in-Residence, Ali Northcott, hosted a charity evening celebrating autistic people in the arts. For this extra special event, we welcomed world-renowned concert pianist Derek Paravicini. Derek is blind, autistic and has severe learning difficulties and is one of the most extraordinary pianists and musical entertainers of his generation, rapidly learning musical pieces simply by listening to them.

Derek was joined on stage by Professor Adam Ockelford, Director of the Applied Music Research Centre at the University of Roehampton, whose research focuses on educational needs and music for those with disabilities.

We were also thrilled to have autistic artist Patrick Samuel, who did incredible live-painting during the performance. His phenomenal artworks were displayed for guests to enjoy at their leisure, and also now grace the walls of the CRAE offices!

Events

CRAE’s 9th Annual Lecture with Peter Vermeulen

In March 2019, we were delighted to host our 9th annual lecture, hosted by the brilliant Dr Peter Vermeulen.

With a MSc and PhD in Psychology and Educational Sciences, Peter has worked with autistic people and their families for more than 30 years. Founder of “Autism in Context” and Senior Lecturer at Autisme Centraal (a Training and Education Centre for Autism), Peter is an internationally respected lecturer/trainer and presents all over Europe and beyond. Peter has written more than 15 books and several articles on autism.

At this lecture, Peter explained that with more than ten scientific articles published per day, autism is just about the most studied condition in the world. Yet he noted that happiness has received little attention in the field of autism. Outcome and intervention studies, for instance, rarely consider emotional well-being as a desired outcome; and when the focus is on well-being, it is often from a negative perspective (i.e., the lack of well-being and quality of life amongst autistic people). In his lecture, Peter called for a radical change in our approach, moving towards a shared and positive focus - after all, we all want to be happy. In other words: let’s move from neurodiversity to neuroharmony!

This sold-out talk attracted an audience of over 300 people. If you were unable to attend, you can see a mini interview with Peter here: https://bit.ly/2zcGsna

DISCOVER: Autism and Employment

Companies are finally starting to realised the potential of autistic people, but how should an employer made adjustment to recruit autistic people and make employees feel valued and supported at work?

In 2018, CRAE in collaboration with autism charity Autistica, organised a series of lectures to explore exactly that.

Audience members were able to: • Hear about employers that are changing the way they work to attract autistic employees. • Hear from an autistic adult who kickstarted his career with a city firm specifically seeking autistic staff. • Learn how researchers are defining ‘good practice’ for autistic employers, and how Autistica is supporting more companies to adopt a neurodiverse work culture.

Bloomsbury Festival

CRAE’s PhD student Jana Brinkert, and former Master’s student, Sarah Crockford, engaged with Bloomsbury Festival attendees as part of the Activism Festival Hub at UCL about their attitudes, perceptions and knowledge around brain imaging. The researchers engaged festival-goers through interactive brainsensing Muse™ headbands to help the general public develop awareness and understanding of imaging, in addition to taking a brain-selfie in the pop-up photo booth, and crafting brain cells and brainwaves – helping to grow the tailor-made tapestry.