10 May 2023

Paintings, drawings and music were the order of the day during an art workshop for autistic people hosted by Botswana Synpowerment Programme in collaboration with BotswanaPost on Monday in Gaborone. 

The workshop was intended to promote emotional and mental growth in autistic persons. 

The programme initiator, Mr Tengyo Kura said art was an outlet for self-expression, imagination and creativity. 

He added that visual arts improved the cognitive and visual perspective of people with autism. Autism is a mental condition characterised by complete self-absorption and a reduced ability to communicate with the outside world. 

Kura said many people with autism struggled to communicate and were often visual thinkers. He said autistic people understood and expressed themselves better through art, adding that images and art also had a soothing effect on them. 

“Art can build a pathway for children with autism to express their feelings and impressions of the world,” he said, adding that their sensory hyper-sensitivity made them more perceptive than non-autistic people. He added that autistic people paid attention to detail in art and that it may also manifest into other fields or subjects. 

He said they included performing artists to assist with music and sport in order to impact the lives of people living with autism. 

He stated that art enhanced communication through creative expression and that children with autism had an enhanced imagination and the ability to build strong relationships. 

He also said art was highly subjective and that every person’s unique abilities and strengths were recognised and thrived in a creative and non-restrictive environment. 

He said collaboration with different types of artists would also open doors for autistic people in that their creativity would be aroused to another level. 

For her part, Autism Botswana chairperson, Ms Kutlwano Seeletso praised the collaboration, saying art was one way of providing a problem solving solution that suited autistic people as they explored and understood their feelings. 

Children with autism choose their colours to make art and they used ice cube drawing, sand art as well as explored other artistic activities. Ends