Last week on Saturday, March 25, we hosted our first ever in-person event! This was a meetup at Whitty Books where we invited folks from the Tulsa community to connect with one another and share information about their needs and interests. After sharing a mutual interest in this project, local author Jes McCutchen and I worked together to plan and schedule this event.
During our planning process, we thought carefully over the course of a few months about how we could create a comfortable, welcoming environment and created flyers and social media posts to share details about the event. On March 25, we set up a table with snacks, nametags, and surveys at Whitty Books and waited to see how the rest of the afternoon would go. Since this was our first time hosting something like this, we weren’t entirely sure how it would go or how many people would show up.
Once the event began, a few people walked in and introduced themselves. As time passed, more and more people began to stop by. By the end of the event, we had to bring in more chairs to fit everyone in the space. Many people enjoyed the puzzles and coloring books we bought, and we received requests for more activities like these at future meetups. We are very grateful to everyone who showed up, and we hope that this will be the beginning of connections that will enable us to offer more similar spaces and additional resources in the future.
During the event, participants filled out a community survey with questions about their personal experiences, needs, and interests. From the survey results, we learned that few resources currently exist for neurodivergent people in Tulsa. Respondents expressed interest in more events, support groups, advocacy efforts, and support resources. One of the suggested events included a hobby swap, which we are excited to follow up on. There was interest in both online and in-person resources, and several people were looking forward to having the opportunity to meet other neurodivergent folks.
Throughout the afternoon, three attendees received a prize bag from a raffle drawing containing a keychain, a $20 gift certificate to Whitty Books, and a copy of Chronicles of My Alien Invasion Life by Jes McCutchen, a fantastic novel about aliens and friendship with a neurodivergent main character. We are interested in offering similar prize drawings at future events, and finding prizes to include in these giveaways could give us the opportunity to connect with other creators in the community. We also offered light refreshments and are considering setting up a potluck-style system for this in the future where attendees can bring their own favorite snacks to share.
The biggest takeaway I’ve gained from this event is the importance of creating safe spaces for connection. Attendees seemed to appreciate having access to a space where neurodiversity was explicitly welcomed, and this is something I’ve always sought while learning to navigate my own neurodivergent identity throughout my life. It’s promising to see that other people feel the same way, and I am enthusiastic to continue working together to continue to create these spaces.
Moving forward, I am going to move from Tulsa to North Carolina at the beginning of June, but we are hoping to host at least one more in-person meetup before then. We hope to get more folks involved in planning and organizing events and resources in Tulsa so that we can continue this project here after I move. I would like to try establishing something similar in North Carolina, and we have discussed creating an online communication channel to connect the Tulsa and North Carolina groups. We can also stay connected by continuing to maintain our blog, newsletter, and Instagram account. We hope to invite more contributors to these platforms and conduct interviews to publish so that more people are able to share their voices and stay connected in these spaces.
It was truly a pleasure to have the opportunity to get to know so many great people at this event, and we are enthusiastic to continue with this in the future!
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