Laura-Sun, Autistic-Self-Advocate, Musical-Autist, Guest at ICDL 2012 Conference

The conference excitement is certainly not over yet…we have some great news to share with you!

Since our last blog post, CJ and Laura-Sun co-presented at the MAR Passages conference, on SensoryFriendly Concerts and Neurodiversity. It went exceedingly well. And the word got out…

Cecilia Breinbauer, Director of ICDL, contacted them later that week and asked if they would like to be guest speakers at the upcoming ICDL conference. Of course they said yes to such a great opportunity!
On Sat. Nov.17th, they will join the panel discussion entitled, “Autism, Neurodiversity, & Self-Determination: Working Toward a More Inclusive Society.”

If you are not familiar with ICDL, whether you are one of our Neurodiversity/Autism friends, or one of our Music Therapy friends, you definitely should know about ICDL = The Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders. Click on that title to learn more about the awesome work they do in autism treatment which presumes competence.

Are you someone who wonders if there are different ways to approach autism other than the typical ABA therapies?

We highly encourage you to click anywhere in the link below.

DIR®Floortime™ is a specific technique to both follow the child’s natural emotional interests (lead) and at the same time challenge the child towards greater and greater mastery of the social, emotional, and intellectual capacities.

Laura-Sun and CJ will be speaking about The Musical Autist’s work in developing SensoryFriendly Concerts to provide equal access to the fine arts and opportunities for autistic self advocacy, which gives us a concrete and definitive example of a more inclusive society.

They’re also looking forward to catching up with Dr. Gil Tippy from Rebecca School in NYC, along with three of the school’s outstanding music therapists, Stacey Hensel, Kenji Takeda and Zachary Kandler. They will be giving music therapy a great representation at this year’s ICDL conference, with their presentation, Improvisational Music Therapy and DIR: An Emotional Continuous Flow. Click on that title, we are certain that ALL our friends and followers will find the work they are doing remarkably progressive.

No surprise that their approach incorporates Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy! Great minds think alike.