Cocreation of thought

Introducing a neurodivergent choreography of conversation, with Danielle Jones and Rosie Heafford, part 1

In late 2024 I connected with Rosie Heafford (Artistic Director, Second Hand Dance), and unknowingly opened the door to the most inspiring professional relationship I’ve had in many years, as well as a vital friendship.

At the time, I was struggling with the positive disintegration of my identity. I was in the depths of neurodivergent breakdown. My family of origin was breaking apart, my then 4 year old son was suffering in the school system, I had a 1 year old daughter to care for at home, we’d just moved house to a totally new place, I was trying to maintain a grasp on my dance career despite seeing very clearly that letting go of this was going to have to be the first part of my process of starting again. Everywhere I looked felt like a crossroads not a path.

Throughout 2025 Rosie and I have explored our practice, lives, and relationships as neurodivergent artists, in a dialogue which has existed on screen, on whatsapp, by voicenote, and through the written word. In doing this, I have been able to keep my dance practice alive as a philosophical, thinking based practice, which infiltrates all areas of my personal lived experience, and is inspired by the world around me.

Rather than feeling like this is a crossroads, instead I’ve recognised that everything exists within a complex web of entangled pathways. Living, mothering, working, moving, thinking, being, both in relation with others and as an individual, are all tightly bound together in an cocreated web.

As two neurodivergent, disabled women, mothers, and artists, Rosie and I have connected over our lived experiences, dance practice and values, our conceptual thinking and the framing of our work. We have been on a thought based journey of discovery and cocreation of meaning which has inspired a PhD application, the launching of this Substack, supported writing a book chapter, and many, many conversations about schools, disability, systems, mothering, advocating, and so much more.

I look forward to sharing more with you about the conversations and ideas that have emerged in this collaborative and entangled, generative relationship. For now though, this introduction is framed through a conversation. In part 2, Rosie and I discuss how our shared dialogue has developed us as artists, influenced our practice, and shaped our ways of working. But to start us off, part 1 introduces how this dialogue came to be, touches on how the communication approach sheds light on the restrictions existing in socially normative work structures, and how crip time, mother time, and seasonal living, support us to reduce the pressure of capitalist and patriarchal work-life expectations.

How did this collaboration come about…

Rosie

So, you emailed me when you were making Kindred and we were in the middle of creating the Sticky Dance, which also coincided with the EHCP tribunal process and court date for my daughter. It wa an incredibly intense time so we didn’t quite connect at that point! But some time later I noticed that you had liked or reposted something Kristy Forbes had posted, and there just really aren’t that many people that are crossing over with arts and PDA! So I reached out.

Danielle

Yes, I wanted to connect as I felt that we were making similar kinds of work–with children at the heart of the making and performance. I wanted a peer dialogue with someone making in this way, and at the time you weren’t available–I know now this was due to your EHCP process, which I am now in the depths of myself for B! But it seemed like there was a synergy there. I just didn’t know what it was yet. It was so great to connect over PDA at a time when I was in such a deep interrogation around this, and to find someone who could have these conversations with me.

Rosie

We began an exchange on WhatsApp, and eventually were able to have a couple of phone calls live, and I remember that you were at the point of B’s first year at school, so we had a lot of exchange about our neurodivergent children as well as our work.

There was what felt like maybe a peppering of light bulb moments that lit me up in terms of the way we were thinking about life and practice. And this is where I think that the threads of cocreation of thought and entanglement feel really strong. I’m not quite sure where one of us started and one of us ended with the thoughts, or which one of us brought in the different threads. But they’ve kind of just shifted and changed as we’ve talked and the ideas have settled in my body.

Danielle

Definitely. The early conversations gave me back a vibrancy and excitement about my practice at a time when things felt really out of reach and heavy. I was contemplating how my PDA profile has infused so much of how I see cocreation and hierarchy free leadership. I think it has impacted the design and implementation of all of my projects and ideas. Then you and I spoke and I remember tentatively saying to you “I think my cocreative practice is a reflection of my PDA and it is a neurodivergent practice” and we both just got so excited that we were thinking the same things!

What followed felt like such an important joining together of minds.

I like to think of it like a dance process of thought choreography. We shared how coregulation, sensory ways of being, democracy and hierarchy, free leadership, crip time, and all these theoretical underpinnings were such an important feature of our work and lives as artists.

I remember this fizzy, excitable feeling staying in my body and driving me to want to write! It was the catalyst to get my Substack moving (I had been thinking about it and writing in the background for nearly four years!)

How has this communication approach influenced your ways of working…

Danielle

There is an inherent neurodivergent communication style that goes right to the heart of deep and reflective issues and doesn’t skirt around the edges with small talk or introduction.

I have found over recent years that the best friendships and relationships I have are with those ND people who are willing and able to do this equally and with the same urgency of sharing as me. Since we began this process of thought development and sharing it has always been so easy and possible to dive straight in and this has been really cathartic and inspiring for me. It is validating as it cuts out all the ‘expected’ social conventions about how we should communicate and is much more clear, which is how I prefer to communicate.

We’ve had so many light bulb moments, so many discoveries of how we apply our practice in our daily lives, so many moments where we have supported each other with our thinking. All of this has been possible because we bring our whole selves to the dialogue and trust each other. This comes from a shared communication style too. Being unafraid to share and be seen by each other.

Rosie

Voice noting really allows, I suppose a monologuing–a kind of unfolding of ideas without interruption. I think there’s safety with the unfoldingness when both sides understand the parameters. The vulnerability that we have built allows ideas to develop while they are being verbalised and being able to say things that then might change. There’s nuance and deep feeling in this and it removes a need to be clear and ‘right’ that can feel really scary to me in shorter or written formats. The fear that comes with leaving a message and then worrying “what did I get wrong? what wasn’t clear?” With dyslexia for me comes a deep sensitivity to if I’ve expressed myself in the way I meant, that’s a learned reaction but also kind of deep rejection sensitivity.

What I really know now which I didn’t know, maybe five years ago, is that in groups larger than three, I stay quiet. As a child at school, I could not put my hand up. It was physically painful to do, to feel that everybody might hear me and I might get it wrong. I remember maybe five or six years back in the dance industry, there were discussions around quiet leadership, or ‘female’ leadership, and what that meant. And I was intrigued, but never really got behind it, because I didn’t like the genderedness of it. I remember going to an event, and I can’t remember what the event was about, but I had a lot to say. I had a lot of thoughts and there was a panel discussion afterwards, but I could not say anything.

Now, I know and understand that my quiet leadership is more about my neurodivergence, and I accept it as well. I will happily have small group conversations - that is where I thrive. In larger groups the discussion can feel performative and without detail - but also impossible to physically access with my disability and caring responsibilities. In some ways, that’s what this is. It’s like a small group conversation that I feel safe to raise and learn things.

Danielle

I am living most of my day to day with my children (age 6 and 2) and I have very little connection with the world outside of my life as a mother, but my brain is on fire with thought at all times. Thinking about dancing and thinking about the application of my life learning and neurodivergent discovery with my dance practice. In itself this is a practice of dance thinking, and I have been able to explore and share that with you through this exchange.

I also think it brings to attention the ways we communicate and work as neurodivergent, disabled humans. I cannot work a linear 9-5 day and I cannot sit at a desk to do it. Inspiration strikes me at different times depending on what I am doing, where I am at any given time, and what the rhythms of the day are like with the children. On some days I get pockets of time to sit but mostly I need to work when I can, on the go - voice record my ideas, write them in a phone note or on a list in a book to attend to later. With our dialogue it has meant I can note the ideas to someone else and we can expand on the ideas and explore routes through, into, or around them together. We’ve shared lived experiences, reading that we’ve done, practice based ideas and concepts, all by whatsapp. This feels informal compared to the expected norms of office working but it is absolutely valid and a much needed way into working for me.

Rosie

Yes, so there’s vulnerability and safety, but also an acceptance of crip time–which we’ve been writing about together. I’ve had an awareness of how this features in my life for a long time, but it’s become much more present now with my caring responsibilities.

Our version of crip time might mean that we are messaging each other late at night and there’s an acknowledgement that’s just the time that it’s been able to happen, because other things have unfolded during the day. There might be a burst of messages, but there’s also been weeks where we haven’t said anything to each other, and that’s okay. There doesn’t have to be a linear continuity.

I feel it’s about inspiration and intuition, and maybe that’s also what I value about this space. My intuition feels so highly valued

Danielle

Yes I agree as I feel that the synergy in our relationship and ways of seeing, being, and thinking, means that I can trust my intuition is so validated with you.

As a woman and a mother I have never been more sure that my intuition is my greatest asset. It speaks to an inner world of deep knowing which has been conditioned into silence. Becoming a mother, and then even more deeply in the process of neurodivergent discovery, I’ve learned to listen more deeply to the intuitive voice that is coming up in times of stress or challenge.

In our dialogue, I’ve been able to share the messages that have come up from my intuitive and sensory world, and test those out in a held and validating space. It is rare to find someone who can help support and reflect from such a similar sense of the world. It’s the kind of validation of my world view that I have always needed!

Rosie

Yes! What comes through really strongly for me is witnessing. Particularly in terms of encountering unjust systems like support for our children, access to work, kind of any of the bigger, broader systems. Being able to share my rage with someone is very small relief, and I think there’s a lot of care from both sides around what’s needed in those moments. Is it just, release? Is it support or redirection? Is it validation? I think these, and probably many other things. But there aren’t many people that can really get the challenges of being a neurodivergent parent to a neurodivergent child within a neurodivergent family living in a neurotypical world. So that space of witnessing feels really important, and also very dance-led.

Danielle

This has been vital for me. Navigating unjust systems has been one of my biggest challenges as a parent to neurodivergent children. Every parent in this system will see it differently, but one thing I have seen is that it is always a fight. And for ND adults discovering their voice and fullness of their identity for the first time, standing up in a fight alone is so deeply draining. Having your support and validation, holding space for my disgust, rage, fury, disbelief, and all the in-between grief, has been such a lifeline. Through my relationship with you there has then been the space and vulnerability to bring the individual experiences and relationship to our practice as person centred artists and humans. Coming from a dance and arts background in general, especially from an inclusive or community facing artistic space where facilitation is meticulously interrogated, cocreation is at the heart of everything we do, and young people, children, adults, everyone who encounters our work is invited in a curious and accepting way–makes dealing with school systems and all systems, much much harder, more jarring, and more painful.

In part two of this conversation, Rosie and I discuss how our cocreation of thought has influenced our practice individually, and I’ll be sharing the themes of my series on dance and neurodivergent practice. If you’ve enjoyed this piece and want to get the next instalment straight to your inbox, please subscribe. All posts on dance, cocreation, and neurodivergence are available for free.