Neurodiversity Embodiment Lab | workshops for adults | The Art of Sensitivity

Do you ever move your leg, play with something in your hands, or repeat a movement when you're concentrating or trying to calm down? Or do you have your own ways to take a break from excess sounds, light, or other stimuli? Every body has its own needs, but we don't always give ourselves the space to notice and understand them.

In a workshop for adults entitled “The Neurodiversity Embodiment Lab” we will look at how movement, sound and touch affect our well-being and the way we perceive the world. Together with Monika Popiel and Paweł Świerczek, we will experiment with movement and the senses, discover non-obvious ways of communication and check what happens when we stop fitting into established patterns for a while. You don't have to have dance experience or special skills — all you need is curiosity and a willingness to explore different ways of experiencing the world. It's an opportunity to take a closer look at yourself and others, and to see that there is no one right way to feel, move, or be together.

Why is it worth coming?

You will notice how you react to stimuli and what you need to feel comfortable.

You will experience something new — you will experiment with movement and senses in a safe space, without having to have any previous experience.

You will give yourself time to be mindful — you will detach yourself from your daily duties and focus on your own feelings.

Neurodiversity starts with a simple fact: no two nervous systems are identical. We differ in the way we perceive and process stimuli, move, learn, communicate, rest, and relate to the world. Although this diversity is part of social and biological reality, our culture often leaves little room for curiosity about it. Instead of asking how my body and senses actually work, we learn to fit into a particular model of functioning in the first place. What deviates from it is sometimes seen as a problem, a deficit, a disorder or simply an oddity.

What if we reverse that perspective? Instead of asking how to fit ourselves into the norm, start looking at how we can function differently — in our own way, according to our own resources and cognitive capabilities.

Neuroqueering is the practice of questioning a neuronorm and seeking alternative ways of feeling, knowing, and being together. It is an attempt to imagine a world in which the different ways of functioning do not have to be hierarchized and the difference can become a source of knowledge and creativity. During the workshop we will neuroqueer through the body and the senses. Going beyond established motor and cognitive norms, we will look for breakthroughs in the neuronorm and ways to embody neurodiversity in everyday life.

We will start our adventure with an exploration of stimming (self-stimulation behaviors), that is, repetitive movements and sounds that neurodegenerative people perform in order to regulate emotions and sensory processes. Stigma, however, is much more. It has the potential to become a sensory language — we just have to learn to listen to it, not through passive perception, but through the mutual choreography of bodies and affects. Together, we will seek these stimming potentials, which will open the way for broader reflections on autistic perception, neuro-altered corporeality, and movement as a matrix of world perception.

The workshop is open to all adults interested in the topic of neurodiversity, regardless of movement experience, identity, age or fitness level. With great attention to needs and limits, we will work with movement, sound and touch. As we will be working as a group, it is advisable to be willing to physically interact with other people.

Monika Popiel (free pronouns) works on a tangle of different disciplines, mixing artistic, technological and research practices. She graduated in directing from the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and applied mathematics from the Gdańsk University of Technology. At the heart of her work is the body as a fundamental place of experience, relationship and cognition. In his research, he combines the performing, relational, sensory and somatic arts with embodied practices of fabric-making, electronics design, and interface programming. It creates interactive spaces of encounter in which the body and the senses not only become material and tools of action, but also actively co-produce them. Her work explores the dynamic relationships between bodies, memory, imagination, technology, and the multisensory experience of the world. Working intensively with the sense of touch, interoception and movement, he raises questions about compassion, coexistence in uncertainty and dissonance and the possibility of joint action.

Website: monikapopiel.com

Paweł Świerczek — graduated in cultural studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice and the Laboratory of New Theatrical Practices at the SWPS University in Warsaw. She works at the intersection of performative and relational practices, artistic research and (neuro) queer activism. At the center of his interests are the tensions between identity politics and embodied experience, specifically queer and neurodiverse. In recent years, she has mainly explored the queer heritage of Upper Silesia (“Of Coal and Rainbow/Wungiel i donga”, Sophienasele, Berlin 2018; “From Ahead Our Time”, Favoriten Festival, Dortmund 2022; collective Silesia Przegiety, 2018—) and the bodily experience of neurodiversity (“Stimpathy”, Fresh AIR, Berlin 2026). Since 2023 he has been practicing and teaching the embodied method of communication Authentic Relating.

Website: pawelswiercz.com

When: October 24, 2026 (Saturday), 10.00-18.30 (during the workshops a break of one and a half hours is provided)

Where: Culture Workshops, 7 Grodzka Street, exhibition hall, 2nd floor

For whom: persons of legal age

Registration: by online form

Free admission, limited number of places, the order of applications decides