I was invited along to a speed friending event at the Lighthouse Store in Cookridge, Leeds to help raise awareness of Autistic Spectrum Disorder or ASD.Before I get into this post I would like to say if I use any outdated or ignorant terms please educate me on the correct terms to use.
About one in a hundred people are affected by autism, although I don't personally have autism I do have friends and family who do so I have some prior awareness of some of the difficulties that a person living with autism may have.
Difficulties such as not being to easily read body language, understand certain social conventions or recognise sarcasm, which must be hell in a country full of sarcastic beasts like England!
Not everyone has autism to the same degree, that's where the spectrum comes in.
Some people will cope much better than others in social situations and girls don't tend to be diagnosed as easily due to them being better able to mimic social cues.
The Lighthouse Union Store is a project that stems from the Light House School, which is a school that was set up to other an alternative to special and main stream schools for children who have ASD.
The projects aim is to teach vocational skills and improve their future employability. At the moment only 7% of people with a learning disability are in employment.Before the speed friending got under way there was a talk by one of the Light House School's trustees Katie Parlett on how the Light House School came to life, it's aim and it's journey.
It was impressive, inspirational and if I am honest a little sad that Katie and the other families that set up the school had to fight and work so hard to set up a school that offers a tailored experience to their children to vastly improve their lives and give them a much brighter future.
To help me and my fellow bloggers understand what it may be like in their social interactions and potentially in an interview situation we wore face masks to find out facial expressions, we were also instructed to try not to move our hands as most of our communication is expressed non verbally.
The best way I can explain this concept to you is if you read text you can interrupt it in any number of ways depending on the readers perspective, this is why I have to tone down my sarcasm when I am sending sexy message late on a Friday night!
The speed friending it's self was quite slow to start, it was an odd sensation trying to talk to an unmoving, seemingly botoxed face.
The first three conversations where quite stunted, partially due to initial nerves, the surrounding noise from other conversations and the masks stifling the voices of the person I was speaking to.I got round the lack of body language by maintaining eye contact, so I didn't find the conversations that difficult.
Chatting to bloggers did make the experience easier, you just get them talking about themselves and away they go.
Let's face it, people who write blogs have something to say for themselves other wise they would struggle to write anything at all.
I thought the whole idea for the event was very clever and the only things I would change would be to have everyone wear sunglasses to avoid the use of eye contact.
I would say change the venue to help ensure people can hear each other better but one of the purposes of the event was to highlight the Light House Union Store and how valuable it is to people with autism and their families.
The Lighthouse Union Store is both a cafe and a charity shop so next time you have a clear out of your wardrobe pop on in and grab a coffee and brownie while you are at it.
I would like to thank everyone at the Lighthouse Store, Search Laboratory who helped organise the event and all the companies that donated and supported the event and cause such as Bloom Bakers, Bakery 164, Dogburgs, Evolution Stores, Gravity UK, Jameson's Cafe and Rollette Cafe
I hope this post has conveyed what a great project this is and if you don't personally feel you connected to the cause the likelihood of you knowing someone is will be pretty high.
Thank you for having me and because many of you were interested in my banana cleanse click here to see how it went.
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