Next week is World Autism Awareness Week (30th March to 5th April), making now feel like the perfect time to come back from my blogging break. There's been lots going on while I've been on break, mainly the country-wide self-isolation caused by Coronavirus at the moment. Even in the midst of the pandemic I've been hard at work on a project to raise funds for an autism charity.
The charity that I'm supporting is Autistic Inclusive Meets, which is an organisation based in London and run by autistics, for autistics. They were chosen through a Twitter poll and won by a landslide. To visit their website please
click here. So what's the project I've been working on? It's been quite a fun one for me to work on because it involves my most recent interest and it's something I've never done before. I've made a custom Pop vinyl figure of my favourite autism advocate - the brilliant Christa Holmans, a.k.a.
Neurodivergent Rebel! I was planning to run through the process of making the figure and the things I've learned, but it'd make the post too long so I'll probably do a separate post just to go through it.
Disclaimer: The custom vinyl figure that I've made as shown and described in this post is NOT an official Funko product, and has in no way been agreed, licensed or endorsed by Funko.
This is now going to be delayed due to us being on lockdown here in the UK, but the plan was to sell the figure (pictured at the bottom of this post) on eBay with the listing running from 30th March to 5th April - the entirety of World Autism Awareness Week. The full selling price (minus postage cost) will be donated to Autistic Inclusive Meets. I fully appreciate that the Coronavirus pandemic is affecting many of us financially, which is one of the reasons I've chosen to delay it. The main reason though is that with us being on lockdown we can now face fines for leaving home for non-essential reasons. Once the listing is up on eBay I'll let you all know, and even if you can't or don't want to bid it would be a massive help if you could share the listing on social media. It's for a fantastic cause, and it's a great opportunity to get your hands on your own mini Neuro Rebel!
While we're on the subject of the pandemic, it is also affecting the other activity that I had planned for next week. Making and selling the figure of Christa was obviously for the purpose of fund raising during WAAW. I was also planning on raising awareness/acceptance by going out into my local community in York and surveying people on their understanding of autism, their their thoughts on it and generally getting a picture of how the people in my local area view autism as a whole. That's now not doable, so I might look at turning it into an online survey and trying to get a wider view of autism rather than just from my local area. If I can do that I'll add a short special post on Monday with a link to share.
A massive thank you to Christa for getting on board with the idea and supporting me by sharing the eBay listing when the time comes. Support from one of the more well known advocates means a lot to me and hopefully together we can do some good for Autistic Inclusive Meets.
As a final note I want to acknowledge that I know that some people dislike and disagree with World Autism Awareness Week because after all, autism exists for more than one week per year and we need acceptance rather than just awareness. I completely agree with those points and I'll be addressing my view on WAAW itself in next week's post. In the meantime, please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm
@DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. My Facebook page and Pinterest account are brand new so I'd hugely appreciate a boost from lots of new followers, and now you can even buy me a (metaphorical) coffee at my Ko-Fi account
here.
[Image description: The custom vinyl figure that I made of Christa Holmans. Funko Pops are short figures of around 3.5inches in height that have over-sized heads compared to their bodies, large black circles for eyes and no mouth, giving them a cartoonish appearance. This figure has Christa's oval-shaped glasses, her green, blue and purple hair which is shorter on one side, red Converse shoes, dark grey trousers and a lighter grey t-shirt featuring a rainbow infinity symbol which is currently the most recognised symbol of autism.]
