Solomon Smith:
gaming, autism and connection Meet Solomon Smith, a long-time Youth ARC living legend and one of our most iconic regulars! As a person living with autism, Solomon is really passionate about raising awareness for autism. An incredibly giving and thoughtful young individual, this interview is one you’ll definitely want to read! If someone was to ask, ‘Who is Solomon?’ how would you explain who you are in a nutshell? Enthusiastic nerd who loves helping our community. That is perfect; that is absolutely correct! One really amazing thing you did many years ago at Youth ARC was raise some money for autism. Can you tell us a bit more about that? I was wanting to do something good when I planned to cut off my long rats-tail, which I had been growing for 16 years! It was a looooong rats-tail (haha)! What brought that on? Can you tell us how it all went down? Mostly, I felt like I wanted to run an event to raise awareness for autism and it worked out well in terms of being able to plan it. I raised about $2000 in total, which I think was about the fifth highest in Australia at the time. If you’d like to see the grand act, you could probably find it on the Youth ARC Facebook page from many years ago. Nice work Solomon! That was quite some time ago. What’s your earliest memory of going into Youth ARC?
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young people? It’s connectivity: it’s a great social hub! It also has a good variety of things for every demographic and audience within range. What about some of the facilities? I know you’ve had a good thrashing of video games over the years with a bit of Halo and the old classics. What are your thoughts about the evolution of video games? Well, I find (at the moment at least) with our youth demographic, we all seem to be playing more general fighting games on the whole. With video games, I feel not much has changed. What’s come to your attention in the online video gaming world, thinking about something like COVID, where a lot of people have had to go indoors? Coincidentally enough, a lot of games are actually putting in their own messages. For example, Dirt Rally 2 has it on their banner while you’re driving around. Also Play Stations are currently having issues, like it’s being really slow. Xbox was having similar issues about two weeks ago. What about finding a job or employment? What were some of the adventures there? Well you guys have provided me with heaps of opportunities for volunteer work, especially with the Youth Advisory Squad. In terms of other work, I just generally always put my name out there and then I’ve heard back about things. I always like to put my hand up when applicable.
Probably about 2012-2013, when I started getting a bus to Youth ARC, which was followed by Bellerive Drama.
If you could do the most ideal job you could ever think of, what would you like to be doing?
Seven years ago! In your opinion, what value do you think the youth centre offers to
To be quite honest in terms of the ideal job which is practical, I’d like to be a gaming machine attendant and bar tender.
