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Prelude: The Nymph Chant sounds like a bird song at sunrise. A call to action. To prayer. To meditation. A ritual of sorts. A ritual for one. Every day Melissa finds a way out of the emptiness and into the fire. The burn is a reminder. It helps to ground her in the now. That mystical thing chased like a fox on a hunt. The Chant keeps her in the room. By the window. Her gaze travels inward at first and then drifts to the horizon with the same commitment. Wings out. Antenna up. Waiting to feel something. Desperate for…

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This post will explain the 12 basic steps to consider and act upon if you would like to run your own Writer Residency.

The steps include; Funding, Partnerships, Marketing, Promotion, Selection Process, Legal, Management, Development, Mentoring, Progress Reports, Public Sharing, and Evaluation. These are your building blocks and the same steps I follow to build the DYSPLA Storymakers Residency, which was established in London in 2018, funded by Arts Council England. …

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DYSPLA Founder, Lennie Varvarides speaks on why poetry is urgently needed in areas of high deprivation

Before you begin reading this post, let me say that I am not an Education Specialist — but I am an expert on how society and schools fail people with Learning Differences through the work I do at DYSPLA. I identify as Working Class and my 7-year-old child attends a school in an area of high deprivation. My Cypriot parents’ childhood, was also one of ‘absolute poverty’, so these themes are extremely important to me.

Charles Dickens’ much-loved novels illustrate a Victorian world where poverty and poor literacy go hand in hand, and for many, not enough has changed in the last 120 years. Victorian England will still look familiar in 2022, with child poverty predicted to rise to 5.2 million hungry children in the United Kingdom. These figures were reported by the UK Government’s Social Mobility Commission.

Being poor is still met with prejudice and disdain…

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LIKE WHO?
…I hear you ask…, well, like; Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, W. B. Yeats, Jules Verne, John Irving, Richard Ford, George Bernard Shaw, Octavia Butler, Sally Gardner, Walter Disney, Jeanne Betancourt, Patricia Polacco, Lynda La Plante, Victor Villasenor, Robert Benton, Steve Mcqueen, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Spike Lee to name just a few!

The WHY is an endless answer to an unresolved mystery. Are Dyslexics better writers? Are they more creative? Are they more determined?

This post won’t completely answer any of those questions, but what it will do hopefully, is spark an interest in the value of being an “Outsider.”

Our world is made up of words and rules and laws and straight lines…

This mural displayed on the facade of the DYSPLA founders Lennie Varvarides and Kazimir Bielecki's home was created by local Neurodivergent artist Shay Press. It is the first mural of its kind to be funded by Arts Council England in the Turkey Street Ward of the borough of Enfield, an area of high deprivation where cultural development is void. DYSPLA is an award-winning disability lead London-based arts organization focusing on developing and producing the work of artists who identify as Neurodivergent.

Having been inspired by the first Covid-19 national lockdown, creative duo Lennie Varvarides and Kazimir Bielecki launched WORDS NOT WALLS, an innovative street gallery experience exhibited over multiple locations within a two-mile radius of Turkey Street Ward. This community-based art and poetry project is designed to reframe who has the privilege to experience great art and cultural engagement.

Staying at home and partaking in the challenges of homeschooling also highlighted the alarming fact that children experience very little creative education in their formative years. The focus has been on reading, writing, and arithmetic since 2010 when the Tory Government stripped…

“Touch is exploratory. Imagine touch as exploration. A conversation you have with yourself. For most of us, our bodies are functional. Touch is mostly utilitarian. But what if touch can also be an artistic pursuit? Can we relate to our body from this new perspective? Is this something that can be explored through touch? Can this online touch workshop be the first step towards experimenting with touch as narrative?” Performative Text by Lennie Varvarides

DYSPLA TOUCH Online will present 2 out of 12 poetic moments of a neurodivergent female’s life. DYSPLA TOUCH asks that you…

I began this publication in June 2021 after receiving Arts Council England funding to develop my own creative practice and am committed to using this space to explore the ‘Neurodivergent Aesthetic.’ This term was first used in 2018 as part of conversations about the DYSPLA International Moving Image Festival, where we exhibited the work of over 20 Neurodivergent filmmakers and shared our ongoing research into the methodologies of Neurodivergent creatives.

This publication is therefore home to people like us, Neurodivergent Creatives like us, people who want to experiment and subvert their creative practice and interrogate the way we make. The…