Stim with nature: touch grass, hum to the rhythm of dappled light, eat dirt. Trust your senses.
Awash with texture and tiny details, Unmasking Nature’s guided geopark experience was shaped by sensory cues rather than traditional mapping techniques, a permission slip to step away from societal systems that cage us.
Unmasking Nature explored joyful ways of engaging with the natural world. Co-designed with neurodivergent people who came together as a community over several months, the walk route took inspiration from their special interests, and was created with disabled participants in mind. The community presented their creative responses to the site through “deep dive” information points and individual artworks. Additionally insights from experts in the areas of fungi, food foraging and biophilia were presented.
At its core, ‘Unmasking Nature’ asked, “what does it mean to be neurodivergent in nature?”. The event we celebrated people’s connection to nature through stimming and emotional cartography. By embracing feel-good, intuitive exploration of the geopark’s deeply interconnected sensory landscape, the project invited participants to engage with themes such as biodiversity and more-than-human communication (including with plants, animals and inanimate elements) through an inclusive, neurodivergent lens.
The event was a collaboration with the Cavan Burren Park at Cuilcagh Lakelands Geopark. A stunning UNESCO Global Geopark spanning the border between Fermanagh Omagh District Council and Cavan County Council. The location features unique geological formations, rich biodiversity and cultural heritage sites. The aim of the Geopark is to promote conservation, education and sustainable tourism.
This location has significantly influenced the development of ‘Unmasking Nature’, which is rooted in lived experience, sensory regulation, and the deep, brain-massaging focus of neurodivergent passions.
Accessibility is a priority for us.
This event included:
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 both thrive in freedom and variety. Every tangle of roots, mossy stone and blooming Dandelion is not just a biodiversity success signal, but a metaphor for the vibrancy of neurodiversity.
One of the ways this project embraces both aspects is by foraging for senses. Being free from the need to mask or adapt to neurotypical expectations supports sensory regulation and boosts calmness and creativity. During the walk, together we explored how natural environments proffer a sense of ease and belonging within them. Participants were urged to open themselves up to what’s often overlooked, to experience nature’s richness from a different vantage point, and to break free from the confining patterns that shape how we sense, move and feel our way through the world.
‘Unmasking Nature’ looked beneath moss and mulch to acknowledge our world full of small and mighty forms, where sinkholes are not dead spaces, but connected wells of creativity and resilience. It 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, and to recognise that thriving depends on the unexpected, the non-linear, and the richly diverse.
Through immersive experiences and moments of soft fascination, ‘Unmasking Nature’ encouraged us to arrive with a curious outlook, and leave with a renewed sense of connection to the varied, beautiful ways that minds can move through the world.
‘Unmasking Nature’ is a project as part of ‘Divergently Together’, led by artist AlanJames Burns through Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics supported by Dublin City University. Supported by Cavan County Council, Fermanagh & Omagh District Council and Cuilcagh Lakelands Geopark.
Divergently Together is funded by