Nino Chincharauli never really expected to be a Civil Society Fellow. She spent most of her adult life involved in the creative industries and contributing to the cultural fabric of Georgia and other countries. Her creativity has manifested itself in paintings, iconography, in poems, and in fictional literature, as well as using her Spanish language skills for the publication of Spanish literature translated to Georgian. Between 2013 and 2015 she had been involved in some project work focused on her native Khevsurain culture, for example the internationally-funded ‘Youth for Preservation of the Ancient Khevsurian Authentic Clothes and Crafts’ and ‘Say It, Khevsurian Woman’ initiatives, and in recent years contributed some part-time work as a project coordinator. But it was the challenge of raising two children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)* that led Nino to apply her creativity to civic activism.
There is little understanding of autism in Georgian communities and consequently children with ASD, particularly young children, are excluded from so much of community life. “Parents with autistic kids often remove them from events and activities with other children as they are afraid of how they might be treated” explains Nino, and the owners and managers of public venues “do not make provision for the specific needs of autistic children, such as ensuring quiet and uncrowded spaces”. Furthermore, members of the general public do not always know how to discuss autism and or how to respond to it. It is a much-misunderstood condition.
In this context, Nino was inspired to raise awareness to ASD by using her artistic skills. In particular she thought that murals – wall paintings – would be a great tool for grabbing attention and at the same time could be created in a participatory way, involving community members with and without ASD. So was born Nino’s project ‘I’m Different, Not Less’, and having learnt about the activities of other Civil Society Fellows in Georgia, Nino saw that joining the alumni of Fellows would be both a way to support the implementation of her project and to mobilise solidarity for her cause.
The ’I’m Different, Not Less’ fellowship project involved gathering interest and permissions from various stakeholders in three cities in Georgia: Batumi, Kutaisi, and Tbilisi. The target was to find wall space, ideally on public buildings like schools or libraries, and to mobilise groups of parents with children with ASD to hold events to create and celebrate murals to raise awareness to autism in each city. “It was incredibly hard work, but the reaction to the three murals in the cities was, and still is, fantastic!”
As a result of the murals, produced over the spring and summer of 2023, Nino has secured local TV reporting on autism and many of the 60 parents involved in Nino’s events are engaging in ways that they didn’t think about before. Some parents have been running their own ‘masterclasses’ to improve understanding of autism; some parents have set up safe places and continuing activities to support a better understanding of autism. One parent founded an integrated space for children with disabilities in Tbilisi called “Andio Land” and plans to open similar spaces in other cities. Another parent, who is a single mother like Nino, founded a psychological therapy centre for parents of children with autism.
Nino explains that “Parents feel that they don’t need to hide anymore. And I too feel much more confident in my parenting and my interaction with others on the subject of autism”. Nino and the murals she helped to create have certainly resonated with the local communities in the three Georgian cities, and have demonstrated the importance of using art for stimulating community discussions. The murals have also led to Nino forming a closer bond to other parents with autistic children. She ends with a recent recollection:
“In Batumi, four months after unveiling the mural, a mother contacted me to say that she had spent the last few months trying to find out who had made the painting. Her autistic child came to the school and fell in love with the painting. The mother said her son couldn’t stop talking about. So, I ended up painting a portrait of the child for her mother!”
*‘Autism is a lifelong developmental disability which affects how people communicate and interact with the world in varying degrees. More than one in 100 people are on the autism spectrum’ – The National Autistic Society (UK).