How can inclusion and understanding be implemented within every day spaces?
NeuroSafe Spaces began with a simple question:
For many neurodivergent people, public places can feel overwhelming. Noise, lighting, uncertainty and social pressure can quickly turn a simple outing into something exhausting. Over time, this can lead to individuals and families withdrawing from community spaces altogether.
NeuroSafe Spaces aims to change that by introducing small, practical adjustments that make environments feel safer and more manageable.
A visible symbol in the window, a clearly marked area and access to simple grounding tools can help people pause, regulate and continue with greater confidence.
NeuroSafe Spaces grew from ARTiculate, a creative programme developed at EPIC Social Care CIC in Speke, Liverpool. ARTiculate brings together young adults with autism and learning differences to explore emotion, communication and regulation through colour, art and sensory practice. Through workshops and creative experimentation, participants began developing visual tools that helped them understand and regulate their own emotional states.
What started as artwork quickly evolved into something more practical as participants began implementing practices into their every day life and self regulation became more intuitive for them.
That raised the next question:
From these conversations, the first ideas behind NeuroSafe Spaces began to emerge.
How can we take these findings further to benefit the wider neurodiverse community?
A creative approach
As a creative practitioner and co-director of EPIC Social Care CIC, Jade's role has never been simply to design tools for people. Instead, her approach centres on creating the conditions for people to design tools for each other. Jade is currently studying a Masters degree in Creative Practice to build the research that supports the design of this project.
Many of the resources within NeuroSafe Spaces have been shaped through collaborative experimentation with the EPIC group. Participants create the artwork that forms our Colour Changing Cloud video while practicing relaxation and sensory stimulating exercises. Using feedback from the group and observing their emotional states prior to, during and after this process, Jade then co-creates the resources.
The result is a growing collection of visual cues, breathing tools and grounding resources that are created by neurodiverse minds, for neurodiverse needs.
This peer-led approach matters.
People who live with sensory overload and social fatigue often understand the smallest but most important details that others might overlook.
By empowering individuals to develop resources that support their peers, the project recognises lived experience as expertise and put the people it directly impacts at the forefront.
NeuroSafe Spaces continues to grow through collaboration, creativity and lived experience - building a network of places that quietly say: