Working with plasticine is extremely comforting. Warming it up and rolling around in your fingers is probably something I could do for a good few hours. Slowly something emerges from the blob…is that? yes I think it is! It’s a horse/badger/dog! Here, we all sit around a big table, Sophie, Lizzie and me, and some of the guys who attend the National Autistic Society’s Lynx Centre in Weston-super-Mare.
Over to one side Dom has set up a green screen with a live feed to a monitor so everyone can see the electronically created backgrounds. Dom changes them regularly. The backgrounds have been previously prepared based on the participant’s interest. Every now and then someone gets up spontaneously and stands in front of the screen to watch themselves interacting with the background. One of the guys, Brian, is very interested, and I mean VERY interested, in trains and particularly St Pancras Station. He stands under the great curved roof on one of the platforms as if waiting for a train. He is lost in thought. There is a cavalcade of CITV characters to do a selfie with. There’s the inside of the TARDIS and even a street in a town on the edge of some distant Star Wars galaxy.
The day continues at this gentle pace. Some of the participants want to animate the models they have made and Lizzie moves to another table where there are a few iPads set up. Some of the animations are meticulous. Janine creates a complex narrative based on a series of terrible farm accidents. Ian, one of the most silent of the group, loves his numbers and animates a plasticine countdown from 120.
– Jeremy Routledge – CTS Project Leader