Under a Tent:
- suejeantheau
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
Tangible Advocacy to Enhance Inclusion at Community Events
By Arc of Hanover Board Member, Sue Jeantheau
Hanover County's festival, fair and special event schedule has grown almost beyond the available weekends on the calendar. Organizations, restaurants, town government agencies, and a variety of co-ops and partnerships all provide local residents and their guests with options for new experiences and family fun.
Even with the best of intentions in offering a robust and fully organized event, sometimes the nature of community events can be much "more" for some people than for others. Individuals with sensory-reception challenges -- which can coincide with having an intellectual or developmental disability -- can face overwhelm in their nervous systems even though an event is enjoyable to them. (Truthfully, it can happen to any of us!)
The Arc of Hanover often receives invitations to be a part of community events, usually to serve as an event volunteer or to share resources. Of course, we love having these opportunities, but we also saw the greater opportunity to help support everyone who wants to attend these events -- including people with sensory-reception challenges.
We created our Mobile Sensory Tent to help fulfill this purpose. Now, we can bring a sensory-friendly structure and items to community events to which we've been invited, and provide a space of calm, quiet focus and co-regulation. The goal is to have individuals re-regulate their nervous systems through the offerings of the Tent and then rejoin the event. We are grateful to everyone who has donated items or who has provided monetary donations toward this effort.
We are also pleased to have made a connection with Emily Hammond, a speech pathologist, self-advocate, illustrator and artist, who lives in New South Wales, Australia, and publishes under the moniker NeuroWild on Facebook. Emily recently developed a guide to help explain sensory differences -- because we all have them, whether we are challenged in environments or not. We will be featuring Emily's guide at the Mobile Sensory Tent, and we are also planning to reproduce several of her art panels from the guide to display as signs on the Tent. Another important part of this effort is to help inform people who are unfamiliar with sensory needs.
We know it's a challenge to meet everyone's needs through one resource, but our trial run-through with the Tent -- at "Operation: Cow Drop" at the Hanover County Airport -- suggests we're off to a good start, with room to expand and change with each event. A sensory bin of dry beans and small toys kept hands full, to the point we'll feature two at our next event. (The youngest participants let us know that marbles mixed in with the beans are not a good idea!) Pipe cleaners and plastic beads were not just creative supplies but thoughtful manipulatives -- for children and adults alike. Textured floor surfaces, streams of bubbles, a large body pillow, and a box full of therapeutic fidgets (from a self-advocate and former Hanover resident who uses fidget sales to purchase beads for his jewelry business) left our visitors embracing a time of bodily reorganization before returning to the action of a bustling event.
Our hope in time is to expand our reach with the Tent and increase the number of volunteers to support the use of the Tent for more and more events in our community. Ideally, with our ultimate goal being increased access and inclusion, we would like to have more Mobile Sensory Tents available to share with event planners in the County -- training more volunteers and supporting the movement toward organizations independently planning and hosting events with their own Sensory Tent.
Big goals! But everyone wins when everyone can participate.
If you would like to join us at an event in which the Mobile Sensory Tent is being used, see our Events tab and look for a listing with a Tent icon on the picture (see image below), or contact Diane Gallegos, Co-Executive Director-Mission, to learn more (scroll down to the bottom of this page for contact information).
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