Animated Hub: Pilot project aimed at young adults with autism and learning disabilities using animation technology as a tool to promote a creative use of computer preventing phenomena such as technology dependence

Working for Solutions Social Care "an established provider of services to children and adults with autism, learning disabilities and behavior challenges", I have been able to observe the relation that young people with autism and learning disabilities have with technology, in particular I refer to the computer, or better, the use of this indispensable tool, and in particolar of  the internet.

In general, the use that the boys and girls living with a mental health condition, make of these tools is similar, in many ways, to what their peers do: they use very little creatively, for the most part they are passive users of the network.

Unfortunately, an element that characterizes many of my clients is the obsessive repetition of the same gestures, repetition in which they also include the use of computer and the internet, looking and looking at the same videos, creating the same documents and printing the same images, viewing and then copying them same or similar images, playing the same games for hours and hours and so on.

In general, that technology can have an additive power, is a well-known, is a fact that currently the phenomenon is the subject of studies and reasoning on possible solutions; for some of my clients in particular, because their mental condition, the risk is even greater.

As a social worker, a social project manager and a lover of the arts, I decided to present a project proposal that was enthusiastically received by my managers and is now being implemented.

The idea is to use animation technologists to canalize the energies of boys and girls into a creative rather than a passive experience.

To give you an example of the working method: the image shown here was created by an autistic boy also afflicted by multiple personalities literally obsessed with wrestling  which he watches the videos obsessively for hours and hours, learning them literally by heart, one of his heroes is the renowned Undertaker.

Starting from his passion, I made a portrait of his hero that then colored, later I showed him his "animated hero" and he began to sing a song that could be added to the video. He also indicated the video saying:"me there",  like he wanted himself  as a cartoon... .

I am actually working with a girl that is not only an incredible artist but that had been able to start animating her draws adding special effects and, basically, starting to learn the basic commands.

The learning process is slow and, long in some cases, the levels of attention are low, but even if you can just draw attention to something creative, capturing the interest of the person, showing him or her  what "else" can do this, for me, is already a good starting result.

In general, the first months of work had been more than satisfactory, in a nutshell: it works!

Sabrina Vispi