Divergently Together is a shared-island creative community engagement project facilitating disabled and neurodivergent communities to participate in climate action.
Climate change is a key issue of our time, and it disproportionately affects disabled communities. Through lack of accessible information, physical vulnerabilities in extreme weather events, increased sensitivity in heat waves due to the effects of medications, are but a few examples of eco-ableism frequently incurred by disabled people. Divergently Together advocates for a just transition, and breaks down stigmas by highlighting that people with lived experience of disability often possess vital skills and characteristics that could greatly enhance climate mitigation strategies.
Divergently Together works directly with diverse communities affected by climate change and local authorities who shape policy. By bridging the gap, the project builds mutual understanding and equips decision-makers with tools for accessible, inclusive communication and ensures climate strategies are grounded in lived experience.
Divergently Together worked with a cross-border community of neurodivergent individuals who hold connections to Cavan, Fermanagh and Omagh. Led by artist AlanJames Burns with the Divergently Together team and co-created with local collaborators Christopher David Schuette, Ciara O’Conor Walsh, Clare Martyn, Julie Anna Richmond, Lorraine Montague, Michelle Harton and Niamh Mc Philips, through creative workshops and discussions, participants co-designed responses to the climate emergency from their own neurodivergent experiences and perspectives.
The wider Divergently Together community includes climate action teams within Cavan County Council and Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, as well as the UNESCO Global Cuilcagh Lakelands Geopark, the Geopark Business Network and Geopark Ambassadors. The Geopark, which spans the North/ South border region and actively supports the project, aligns with our goals of accessibility and inclusivity. Together, we aim to strengthen skills and knowledge, and cultivate a collaborative understanding of neurodiversity and climate action
Unmasking Nature is an evolving, multi-part project exploring sensory stimulation with the natural world.
Our society, which often demands conformity, causes many people to mask their true selves. Nature offers radical relief: acceptance without judgment and unconditional belonging. Neurodivergence and biodiversity can both thrive with the freedom to grow. Every tangle of roots, mossy stone and blooming Dandelion is not just a biodiversity success signal, but a metaphor for the vibrancy of neurodiversity.
Unmasking Nature looks beneath moss and mulch to acknowledge our world that is full of small and mighty forms, where sinkholes are not dead spaces, but connected wells of creativity and resilience. The project challenges us to reconsider biases that favour the visible and the normative; it’s a call to embrace difference as essential to the fabric of life.
Nature provides a trove of multi-sensory offerings that provide gentle stimulation and boost calmness. By embracing feel-good, intuitive explorations, Unmasking Nature invites you to dive deep, leaf through and let your curious senses guide you. Spending time in nature supports the nervous system, helping to restore balance and wellbeing. For neurodivergent people, spaces that allow for stimming, regulation, and recharging can be especially beneficial.
Unmasking Nature; Foraging for senses–a guided walking event that took place in the Cavan Burren Park. Co-created by the Divergently Together community and led by AlanJames Burns, the event explored joyful ways of engaging with the natural world, shaped by sensory cues, rather than traditional mapping techniques.
The walk route took inspiration from the community’s individual special interests, and was created with disabled participants in mind along the accessible outdoor trail. Opportunities to experience their creative responses to the site included “deep dive” information points, in addition to the insights of professionals and experts in the areas of fungi, food foraging and biophilia.
Unmasking Nature; Sensory Burrow is an interactive installation led by AlanJames Burns, exploring neurodivergence and nature through the tactile practice of stimming, connecting audiences to the healing potential of the landscape through neurodivergent ways of engaging with the environment.
Emerging from the notion that ‘Neurodiversity is Biodiversity,’ the Sensory Burrow centres connection to nature as a tool for regulation, rest and sensory grounding, offering an alternative to plastic or clinical sensory environments.
Brimming with organic material, ‘Unmasking Nature: Sensory Burrow’ is a multi-sensory trove of natural materials, offering visitors opportunities to connect with nature as a tool for self-regulation, rest and emotional grounding, with places for sitting, resting and burrowing among tactile collections of acorns, conkers, pinecones, etc, designed to regulate the body through emotional cartography and ‘stimming’ with nature. The project conceptually draws parallels between biodiversity and neurodiversity, highlighting how patterns in nature reflect neurodivergent ways of moving through the world.
