Spiral Time, Divergent Design, Composting Slime, Starting... (on a dime?)

plus an update from Chez Davis-Rose || and some guest posts are coming!

Chez Davis-Rose || Guest Posts on TSL

Joel is home from the hospital, just one day post surgery, and we are so relieved. We’ve had some terrible bad luck with post-surgical complications in the past, so we had geared ourselves up for more of the same, but it seems third time’s the charm. The surgery went well and Joel is resting comfortably.

Because I was expecting the worst, I had lined up some guest posts for the next few weeks, and while I probably could keep up my regular schedule of posting now that we are looking at a complication-free (knock wood) recovery, I’m not going to cancel the guest posts because they are so good! I’m very excited to expand the voices you hear on The Spiral Lab, and to offer some of my brilliant DDS colleagues an opportunity to share their writing with you. So stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, I wanted to share about the courses and workshops I’m facilitating and co-facilitating in the rest of 2025. I hope you will consider joining us for some or all of them—I’m very excited about these offerings and I’d love to hang out and explore with you! We have tried to keep the prices very accessible (while also paying me a living wage), but if they are still too steep, contact my colleague (and producer) KR Moorhead, krmoorhead.lit@gmail.com, about the waitlist for pay-what-you-can tickets.

Spiral Time, Composting Slime, Starting… (on a dime?)

By popular request, I am re-running my Creating in Spiral Time and Neuroqueering Shame (i.e. composting slime) workshops, plus I’m offering a third one called Mise en Place: When Getting Started is the Hardest Part (starting on a dime?).¹

Each course consists of one 2-hour session, plus a recording if you can’t attend live.

Tickets are on sale now! Tickets for one course are £15 GBP (about $20 USD); or book all three together for £40 GBP (a £5 discount). You can also pay two monthly instalments of £20.

There are a limited number of free places available for those on low or no income. Please only select this option if you are unable to afford the General Admission cost.

Neuroqueering Shame in our Creative Lives

Saturday, July 5th, 12-2 pm EDT (5-7 pm BST) via Zoom

Shame is a powerful political tool used in almost every area of our lives—our families, our schools, our workplaces, even our identities—to wrench us into conformity with the values of industrial-colonial time and compulsory executive functioning. In this workshop, we will look at the ways shame disables us for deviating from neurotypical expectations and norms, and the ways it creates dysfunction in our creative practices. Through creative care invitations, we will examine some of the ways shame shows up and explore how we can disrupt and even transform it, so that it becomes less and less debilitating.

Creating in Spiral Time

Saturday, July 19th, 12-2 pm EDT (5-7 pm BST) via Zoom

Neurodivergent people are often plagued by a sense that we have “wasted time” and “fallen behind” our peers in terms of productivity and creative accomplishment. If there is any hope for finding a more enjoyable and generative relationship with time, we need new metaphors that defy the contemporary Western ones that have colonized the world. We will explore alternative metaphors and values of slowness, cyclicality, ritual and rest. Through creative care invitations, we will explore the different shapes time might exist for us, and how we might inhabit time differently.

Mise en Place: When Getting Started is the Hardest Part

Saturday, July 26th, 12-2 pm EDT (5-7 pm BST) via Zoom

​Many of us struggle with getting started, maintaining momentum, and following through with our creative projects and lives, as well as caring for our spaces and supplies. We are often shamed for these struggles, and offered many hacks and systems that seldom last very long, but we seldom are invited to examine the reasons these issues plague us in the first place. Mise en Place, a concept from the culinary world, offers a practice of slowness, and of pleasure in the materiality of our creative projects, and in our creative lives. We will spend time in the session doing the mise en place for a project we are having difficulty starting, or that has stalled out in the middle.

Divergent Design

One Small Space

Designing our homes to accommodate and celebrate our unmasked neurodivergent selves is life changing—but also incredibly daunting. We are often bogged down by shame, limited bandwidth, and financial constraints. It can also be so difficult to know where to get started, to come up with a design that really works, and then actually follow through. In this course, we will tackle so many of those issues by focusing on one small space. Not even, necessarily, a whole room. You might choose the desk where you work or make art, or the bed where you spend most of your days wishing you could do creative work if chronic illness didn’t sap your strength and spoons. You might choose one kitchen cabinet that would make food prep easier if you could just find what you need, or a closet that would make your clothes actually accessible to you. You will be urged—strongly—not to take on too much, so that you can identify some small subset of your needs and get really creative about designing a space you can sustainably maintain. We will examine the ways shame and the “shoulds” of convention interfere with how we imagine and design our spaces; we will share and workshop our design ideas; and we will spend long body doubling sessions actually working together on our spaces.

This course consists of four Monday sessions presented by Marta: Mondays July 21st & 28th, Aug 11th & 18th, 1-3pm EDT via Zoom (10am PDT; 6pm BST); and two longer body-doubling and support sessions on Sundays: Sundays Aug 3rd & 24th, 11-3pm EDT via Zoom (8am PDT; 4pm BST)

Can't attend live? The Monday sessions will be recorded and shared with all ticket holders.

Tickets on sale from June 27! To get updates and reminders make sure you Register Your Interest.​

All Tickets are £75 GBP (about $100) (or three monthly instalments of £25).

There are a limited number of free places available for those on low or no income. Please only select this option if you are unable to afford the General Admission cost.

Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice

After two wildly successful offerings of this life-changing² course, we are running it again this fall! If you would like a taste of the vibe and the content, we are offering two FREE Taster Sessions take place on July 7th & Aug 19th @ 10 am PDT/ 1 pm EDT/ 6 pm BST via Zoom.

To be the first to hear when discounted Early Bird Tickets go on sale, and to get updates on session descriptions, make sure you Register Your Interest. ​​

This course consists of 12 Weekly Sessions (+ 2 weekly optional drop-in hours), and is co-facilitated by KR Moorhead, Marta Rose (me!) and Meg Max

Neuroqueer (v): the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously Walker, Nick Dr., ‘Neuroqueer: An Introduction’ (2021)

​This course is an introduction to a variety of ‘neuroqueering’ practices, geared towards artists and creatives. As a community, we will deconstruct capitalist/colonialist concepts of time, work, productivity, shame, ‘executive function’, language, grammar and more, while simultaneously constructing new systems, languages, narratives, and ways of being/creating that subvert, defy, disrupt, and liberate us from oppressive social structures.

Session topics are drawn from the facilitators' (evershifting) personal and professional interests and will vary from intake to intake. Sessions we have run in the past cover topics such as: composting shame, executive function vs design thinking, decolonising time & productivity, neuroqueer stylistics, creative lineages, radical memoir, unmasking in creative practice, community building & collaboration.

Discounted Early Bird Tickets will be available for one week for anyone who has registered interest. ​​Four & six-month payment are available for both Early Bird and General Admission Tickets.

Early Bird Tickets: £159

General Admission Tickets: £199

FAQs

Who is this course for?

• Anyone who writes or makes art (or would like to). No previous knowledge or experience required.

Do I need to identify as Neurodivergent or Queer in order to join?

• Nope! “One can neuroqueer, and one can be neuroqueer. A neuroqueer individual is any individual whose identity, selfhood, gender performance, and/or neurocognitive style have in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering, regardless of what gender, sexual orientation, or style of neurocognitive functioning they may have been born with.” (Walker, N.)

How big is the group?​

• We offer a maximum of 100 places - but are aware this is a large group. Each weekly session will be presented to the full group, but attendees will be placed in much breakout groups for discussions, with the option to stay in the main room and quietly reflect/body-double. Additionally, there will be 2 extra one hour drop-in sessions per week, one for discussion, one for body-doubling.​ Attendees are also encouraged to join the NQ Discord for connecting, communicating and creating in community.

Will I be expected to 'produce' anything?

• Although creative, reflective, and generative invitations will be shared, nothing is mandatory or expected and no one will ever be 'called on' or shamed for not engaging with a particular element of the session.

Will I be expected to share my creative work?

• Although there will be opportunities to share work, this is not expected or required, or even necessarily encouraged except in specific spaces.

Will I be expected to be on camera or speak on the mic?

• Members are free to engage on camera/mic or 'lurk' off camera as they feel, in any given session. No one will ever be put on the spot or asked to speak or engage unless they have volunteered.

What is included in the ticket price?

• Access to twelve live, structured sessions via Zoom, which will consist of discussions, presentations, guided reflection, writing invitations, and art-making.

• Access to two, weekly, optional drop-in hours: one hosted by a facilitator which serves as a small group space in which to discuss, reflect, and question that week's topic, and one unhosted session for quiet body-doubling.

• Access to all session recordings, invitations, & slides, as well as relevant further reading materials.

• Access to a private online group where all materials will be hosted and group members are able to interact with each other and the facilitators throughout the course and in perpetuity.

• Access to the Neuroqueerdos Discord server - an active community space made up of attendees of previous NQYCP intakes.

• Free and continuous access to all of KR Moorhead's Writing Sprint sessions (Mondays 5-6pm & Thursdays 10-11am GMT) from the start of the course.

1. Ok, I know …. groan … but I just can’t help myself!

2. Ok, yes, I can sometimes be hyperbolic … but right now I’m really not: folks really do say this is life-changing! Check out these testimonials!