I’m so excited to be launching Neuroqueer Creative: an international collective of creative practitioners and facilitators dedicated to building a more neuroqueer* society. Below is a little explainer about what NQC is, how we got here, and how you can take part in our community. Whether you are old or new to my work and this space, I hope you will find something on offer that will support you in your creative life.
The Neuroqueer Creative collective is really just a collaborative expansion of the freelance work I have been doing over the past few years. In fact, many of you are already a part of the Neuroqueer Creative community! I’m honoured that so many of you came into this space and decided to keep hanging out, maybe engaging in multiple offerings over the years. But the time has come to open up this space to even more community and even more collaboration! For you, NQC means a whole array of new offerings, coming directly from community members who work across forms, subjects, and modes, and offer a multiplicity of perspectives and lived experiences.
If you’re new here, we’d love for you to join us. We offer creative learning spaces, practice clubs, and community events that align with our understanding of neuroqueering. The majority of the community is queer, neurodivergent, disabled, and/or chronically ill - identities we know are disproportionately under-resourced, under-employed and unemployed, especially when they exist along a variety of other axes of social oppression like race, ethnicity, and social class - therefore, we are dedicated to financial accessibility. We offer free community body-doubling and free scholarship places on most courses. Paid access is always available at multiple tiers, including a low-cost subsidised tier and, in some cases, a pay-what-you-can option. For longer courses and offerings, payment can be made in monthly instalments across all price tiers at no additional cost. Many of our facilitators offer one-to-one mentoring and support work that can be paid for through Access to Work for folks in the UK. It is our mission to create a community that people can come back to, develop real connections within, and be supported by long-term.
It’s still early days and in true neuroqueer fashion, we’re unfinished and imperfect - and will probably always be in some way or other. We are in the final weeks of our first community facilitated courses, Art for Activism and Radical Rest, and this past weekend we had the pleasure of hosting an in-depth, thoughtful and inspiring discussion on eco-grief, radical love, and imaginative futures with author of The Snag, Tessa McWatt and the author of Black Climates (and NQC facilitator) Selina Nwulu. Over the coming months, we will be rolling out more new offerings, new branding, and many ways to engage with the community. Beyond that, we will continue to experiment and iterate as new stars enter our constellations.
In many ways, 2026 feels like a new start - even though I recognise spring as the real new year - and with the launch of Neuroqueer Creative, it is. But it is also a continuation. A natural progression of the transitory period I have been in for the last five years. In December of 2020, I had recently been diagnosed with ADHD. We were nine months into COVID, and I was 6 weeks into an 8-week lock-in with my estranged, alcoholic mother, in the lead up to her death in February 2021. I was a full-time lecturer at a UK university, and about to turn 38.
By my 39th birthday, we were back on campus teaching in-person, my mother was dead, and I was re-contextualising my understanding of myself, my life and my relationships through this new lens of neurodivergence. I experienced intense burnout from being overworked, underpaid and unaccommodated. And instead of support from my workplace, I was reprimanded for no longer being able to maintain the intensity of work that I had been maintaining pre-COVID. I realised that the life I had been working towards for 15 years was no longer sustainable for me. I decided to move to part-time hours, so I could start experimenting with freelancing from home.
Sometime before my 40th birthday, I discovered the concept of Neurodivergent Spiral Time as conceived of by Marta Rose of Divergent Design Studios & The Spiral Lab, and began to understand that life is cycles and not straight lines. I started attending an online peer support group for neurodivergent writers called Creative Chaos, hosted by Meg Max of Writers in Bloom, and I learned so much from the other members of the group, shared so many of their experiences. I began releasing myself from Capitalist shame and started writing again for the first time in over a decade. I applied what I was learning to my freelance facilitating and mentoring through courses like Writing While Neurodivergent and Writing the Radical Self. I started to see that there are other ways to be, think, do, make, teach, communicate, learn... ways that align with who I am and what I need.
When I turned 41, I was no longer a lecturer in an academic institution. I had been introduced to the concept of neuroqueering, as coined by Dr Nick Walker [for more on what I mean by Neuroqueer, see below.] I had realised that academic institutions were antithetical to my needs as a ND genderqueer person, and to the act of neuroqueering - something I wanted to embed in my work moving forward. So, I chose to leave that space and try to build an alternative. A place where creative expression, practice and knowledge are not gatekept. Where all ways of creating are encouraged. Where no one is shamed for not creating in the ‘right’ way. Where we actively pursue radical counternarratives to the oppressive grand narratives of White Supremacy, Colonialism and Capitalism. Where we see creative practice as a means towards a more socially just society.
A year ago, Meg, Marta, and I had just finished the first run of our collaborative course, Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice, and I was beginning to grasp what was possible through collaboration. So much of what we’re brainwashed to believe living under these oppressive structures is based on the idea that we have to do it by ourselves and that we are all in competition with one another. Whether that’s writing and making art, or climbing a corporate ladder, or even just dealing with our day-to-day stresses and heartbreaks. But when Meg, Marta, and I pooled our resources, knowledge, and experience, we were not only able to create something mutually beneficial and greater than the sum of its parts; we were also supported when our energy or capacity fluctuated. We were able to not just talk about neuroqueering, but engage in it through the ways we facilitated the space and the ways we worked together to build the course. Humans are inherently collaborative. We flourish when we work together, which is why Capitalism doesn’t want us to. Capitalism fails if we are all flourishing.
Capitalism tells us that something isn’t really worth doing unless it can make you money and/or you can do it better than everyone else. That we shouldn’t even make art unless we can make something brilliant & sellable, and do it all on our own (or at least look as though we did). But because humans are inherently collaborative, we are also inherently creative (or perhaps it’s the other way around). Collaboration is, in itself, a creative practice, just as creative practice relies on collaboration. Yes, we make art, writing and music. But we also make food, clothing, homes, communities, relationships, connections. Things that cannot be done alone.
So, now we’re here. The day of my 43rd birthday and I am launching Neuroqueer Creative - itself a creative collaboration. NQC operates on the premise that creative practice is broad and all-encompassing; that it is never a straight line to production, but instead an iterative, spirally, meandering process that we are forever fluctuating within. We believe that making art is a radical practice; that everyone should have easy access to creative knowledge, experience and practices, and that creativity and imagination are the key to building better worlds.
Queer Book Club
Bad Art Club
Bad Zine Club
Writing Club
...and more!
Dr Nick Walker (who coined the word in 2008) says:
“I should first of all acknowledge that any effort to establish an “authoritative” definition of neuroqueer is in some sense inherently doomed and ridiculous, simply because the sort of people who identify as neuroqueer and engage in neuroqueering tend to be the sort of people who delight in subverting definitions, concepts, and authority...
I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb: neuroqueering as the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. It was an extension of the way queer is used as a verb in Queer Theory; I was expanding the Queer Theory conceptualization of queering to encompass the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as gender norms––and, in the process, I was examining how socially-imposed neuronormativity and socially-imposed heteronormativity were entwined with one another, and how the queering of either of those two forms of normativity entwined with and blended into the queering of the other one.
So neuroqueer was a verb first, and then, like its root word queer, it was also an adjective. Even in that first paper in which I used the term in 2008, I used it as both a verb and an adjective. As a verb, it refers to a broad range of interrelated practices. As an adjective, it describes things that are associated with those practices or that result from those practices: neuroqueer theory, neuroqueer perspectives, neuroqueer embodiments, neuroqueer narratives, neuroqueer literature, neuroqueer art, neuroqueer culture, neuroqueer spaces.
And, just like queer, the adjective form of neuroqueer can also serve as a label of social identity. 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.
Or, to put it more concisely (but perhaps more confusingly): you’re neuroqueer if you neuroqueer...
This definition is, again, not an authoritative “last word” on the subject, because that would be a silly thing to attempt. Rather, I hope this will be taken as a “first word” – a broad “working definition” from which further theory, practice, and play will proceed.”
When I was introduced to the concept of neuroqueering and wanted to find ways to bring it into my particular creative and professional practices, I found myself considering these two questions:
1. What do cisheteronormativity and neuronormativity work in service of?
2. Why do we neuroqueer?
To me - it is clear that cisheteronormativity, neuronormativity, and all axes of social oppression (racism, sexism, misogynoir, classism, ableism, etc) work in service of the larger structures that oppress us all: White Supremacy, Colonialism, and Capitalism.
White Supremacy is the ideology. The overarching, deeply held belief system used to justify systemic oppression.
Capitalism is the mechanism by which systemic oppression is embedded and nourished in society.
Colonialism is the distribution method by which the ideology and mechanism (and therefore, systemic oppression) are spread throughout the world.
So, if we neuroqueer to ‘subvert, defy, disrupt, liberate ourselves from neuronormativity and cisheteronormativity simultaneously’, then we should seek to ‘subvert, defy, disrupt, liberate ourselves from’ White Supremacy, Colonialism and Capitalism.
So - at NQC - we define neuroqueer in the following way:
To Queer: To subvert, defy, disrupt, liberate oneself (and one’s community) from Capitalism, Colonialism and White Supremacy through making, acting, being and doing…
Neuro: And also through thinking, feeling, perceiving, and processing.
NOTE: Neuroqueering is a radical and deeply political practice. This means Neuroqueer Creative is staunchly abolitionist, anti-fascist, and pro-Palestine. In line with this, we are working to divest from both Google and Wix. Replacing this functionality requires time and resources, as we need multiple integrated platforms; however, we plan to complete the process within the first half of 2026.
For semi-regular messages from our community of facilitators, highlighting how they are bringing their experiences, interests, and knowledge to the wider NQC community, subscribe to this Substack.
If you would also like regular email updates about specific NQC courses, clubs and events you are interested in, subscribe to the NQC email list.
If you ever have any questions or need further information, I encourage you to reach out to me directly at kr@neuroqueercreative.com
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