Empirical studies cry out that

autistic/ASD support in adulthood should investigate what promotes the Quality Of Life of autistic adults above all else.

Magical Women therefore focuses on what promotes Quality of Life and we have found it is stimming through art-making.

Project Art Works’ participant Jack Denness’ self portrait was recently nominated for a Turner Prize. However, neurodivergent artists like Denness have to be discovered by neurotypical artists or arts organisations to be recognised as a professional contemporary artist (Cosslett, 2021). 

Autistic or neurodivergent artists with no learning disabilities fall through the cracks because their barriers are not recognised or acknowledged by these art organisations.

Magical Women’s purpose and originality is that it is an autistic led artist development/art-making platform for neurodivergent women (and marginalised identifying) artists.

In 2020, we were awarded a year’s residency at Battersea Arts Centre’s Scratch Hub yet this opportunity was moved online during the pandemic.

Online, Magical Women became a sanctuary for autistic/neurodivergent artists where they could maintain autonomy by attending to their art practice through the collective unconscious (Jung, 1991). Digital spaces became accessible and powerful places to make and share work for autistic women artists who face barriers in physical spaces often due to care responsibilities.

Here, Magical Women can find refuge on the edges of society (Castle, 1993) because autistic women are more prone to isolation, usually withdrawing voluntarily. 

I showcased over 200 autistic/neurodivergent women artists with the support of support workers, Gemma and Megan, paid for by Access to Work, a disability benefit that supports disabled people like myself access employment.

I ran Magical Women through the prism of autistic leadership: stimming was placed at the centre of online workshops, exhibitions and a publication sold through Live Art Development Agency’s bookshop, Unbound. My self-published zines also headlined at LADA’s Book and Publication Fair 2019. 

Now… Unfunded

Now, Magical Women is unfunded but we continue to look at how we can return to its powerful way of making and attending to art practice.

Rather than ask for your donations to continue our work, instead I am going to team up with a few Magical Women artists to focus on how we can keep access at the core of everything we do.

We are still applying to funding bodies because we really want to bring out regular Zines, hold space for accessible workshops, share live art, host live and online events and ultimately, create.

The barriers faced by autistic women are invisible (Mandavilli, 2015) but similar to women in society who face inequality. Often only autistic men will be recognised or awarded by arts organisations.

Magical Women’s work, and my own practice and work as an art psychotherapist, educator and mentor is further epitomised by an autistic/neurodivergent artist’s urge to occupy physical space, their search for sanctuary outside of traditional “safe” spaces, and their quest for control in their art-making processes.

In Magical Women, and the work and purpose of Magical Women is this…

To enhance opportunities for Autistic and neurodivergent women artists to use stimming to work alongside these somatosensory experiences (See: Rowlands, 2018, 2021) in search of sanctuary,  safety, shelter and space to exist and function in the world.