Ostinato - World Autism Awareness Day
Classical/Contemporary
Ostinato - World Autism Awareness Day
Playing an ostinato means repeating something uninterruptedly without change - this is also true for the everyday functioning of many children living with autism spectrum disorder. Nevertheless, the non-verbal arts (music, visual arts, dance) can help them break out of this state; during music making, rigidity can turn into adaptability, constraint into free self-expression, and difficulties caused by communication and social situations into new connections and bonds. Through visual self-realization (painting, drawing, clay modeling), children can better understand their own emotions, helping them to peek out from the closed world they live in, and thereby, we can connect with them more easily.
On World Autism Awareness Day, we try to showcase exactly what this extraordinary relationship is between the arts, especially music, and autism. With the help of the autistic students of St. Nicholas Kindergarten, Primary School, EGYMI, and Children’s Home in Budapest, as well as artists and experts, we can get closer to this peculiar, unusual, but fantastic world. The children's colorful musical performance, exhibited visual art creations, the literary excerpts presented during musical productions, and the experts' thoughts all contribute to gaining a better understanding and insight into the world of children living with autism through the arts, so that the knowledge and experience can reach more and more people, allowing us to understand that autism is not a disease, but a different operating mode that, once familiarized with, can result in more harmonious relationships with our fellow humans affected by autism.
