1st Annual Newsletter December 2018

​We’ve had a really busy lead-up to becoming a charity on 22nd November 2018, and by the way, we are thrilled to announce that we are the FIRST Autistic Pride Charity in the UK! Check out this link to see who are our trustee’s. This is us on facebook and twitter

We’ve run the Autistic Pride Reading event in Prospect Park for 4 years now -  and sold 700 tickets this year! As always we had our mix of arts, crafts, sensory play and talks including Ruth Moyse and Carly Jones MBE. Ann Memmott and Florence Dolle got stuck in making lots and lots of slime and were fairly covered themselves by the end of the day. As usual, the fabulous folks of Reading Society of Model Engineers let us hold the event at the Prospect Park model railway, and Reading Council let us spread out into Prospect Park itself. We also ran our first poetry competition, sponsored by The Literary Gift Company and judged by fabulous autistic poet Joanne Limburg. For the results of the competition, please click here

We have got a FABULOUS new logo! This has been designed by Simon the graphic designer from Crumbs the Word Bakery who are the wonderful people who annually donate a cake to be raffled at Autistic Pride Reading (this year it was this AMAZING Chocolate Overload Cake). They are also donating a profit of their sales to us and we think they’re rather fabulous for doing so! Please do check out their web-page.

​We have been running our monthly families session at Burghfield St Mary’s and are moving to Burghfield Common Scouts Hut. We have a core of about 5 families that visit regularly. We offer sensory play and toys, crafts, books, lego, pokemon cards and Xboxes, plus hot and cold drinks plus biscuits - all for free. Do check our website http://www.autisticpridereading.co.uk/ for more details and times.

We have received a cheque for £500 from Burghfield Residents Association. This is to continue providing Burghfield Autistic Group for free and will pay for the rent, refreshments and PAT testing.

​We were lucky enough to be offered a spot at Burghfield’s Annual May Fayre. We had a quiet space and sensory activities on offer. The slime proved incredibly popular! It was good to be able to meet and share stories with other local autistic residents.

Autistic Pride Reading was also at the Waterfront Festival. This was a great opportunity to be out and about making useful connections with autistic people, getting our profile out there, and making more slime! We love these sorts of events as we get to meet lots more autistic people and sometimes be the first openly diagnosed adult that many have met. We feel this is a really positive step forward.

We ran an adults discussion group in Earley looking at work by Luke Beardon on what it actually means to be autistic. It was useful to challenge internalised ableism and to spend time with other autistics. We are looking at holding a “Bring-your-own-interest” group sometime in the New Year so please keep your eyes out for that.

You might have heard Rachel Cotton on Radio BBC Berkshire, talk about Autistic Pride Reading to Bill Buckley and competing in the Andrew Peach show.

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Autistic Pride Reading had it’s first Big Day Out - to Buckingham Palace. All thanks to the fabulous Amy Stoker and her team.  We had our own private autistic families tour which was amazing! 20 of us were able to dance, draw, take part in a pretend knighting in the actual room where honours are given - it was an amazing trip. The most daunting bit was coming out behind the famous gates and have all the tourists looked confused as they tried to work out if we were celebrities.

Looking forward to seeing lots of you at our next event, Burghfield Autistic Group Christmas Special featuring magician Jay Rawlings. Tickets available from this link: Burghfield Autistic Group Christmas Special

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