Last week, in what was probably a moment of madness, I created by own autism act You Tube channel! I felt very energised after my radio appearance on Women’s Radio Station with Anna Kennedy OBE and felt very motivated to try something new myself. I had a look at You Tube to see what type of videos there are already in existence focusing on autism and found it to be very varied. So I decided to give it a go and if people want to watch they can, and if not, they won’t. I won’t be making a fool of myself – hopefully! I commented to a friend that I didn’t know if I had done this is a moment of madness, or a moment of inspiration. She replied that it did not matter as long as the desired outcome was the same – very wise words!
Seriously, I have realised from a business point of view that I need to continue to promote myself until I can return to face to face consultancy and training. And that means I have to diversify and go beyond my comfort zone, muster up all my primary school teaching experience and pretend I have a class in front of me (that I can’t see!) and that will help me to put together the videos on the new autism act You Tube channel.
The autism act You Tube channel will have 2 purposes:
- A podcast will be uploaded the first Wednesday of every month. I will talk about what has happened or what is coming up with autism act, in addition to introducing a guest. I have a range of guests lined up who have a variety of ‘roles’ within autism, either professionally, personally or as a parent. This will be a fantastic way to hear individual journeys relating to autism and gain different perspectives. The podcast itself will last for about 25 minutes and should be fun and informative. My first guest is a local Headteacher who will be sharing how her school uses a range of strategies to support autistic pupils.
- Every 2 weeks, I will be linking this Monday morning blog to 2 follow up You Tube videos. Tutorial Tuesday will cover some theory linking to the blog and Strategy Saturday will guide you in something you can do. These are designed to be short and give you a taste of the services offered by autism act. You may be happy with the snippets of information or you may want to contact autism act for some more information through consultation or training. The aim of them is to be informative, up to date with current thinking about autism and easy to understand.
Being a small business trying to keep afloat during the Covid 19 lockdown makes you realise you can take nothing for granted in life. I am having to diversify on a regular basis to meet the need that is out there, whilst steering my business in a different direction due to Covid 19. For an audience to come to me, I have to go to them first and social media appears to be the best vehicle. It may not give me instant impact but may grow over time and who knows where it will lead. I feel we can get very hung up on the way we want something to be and it is hard to let that go and embrace a different way of doing something, especially in times of high anxiety. And of course, that is how we are generally functioning at the moment, with an unknown outlook for the foreseeable future. The need to diversify for autism act is out of survival and necessity rather than wanting to. But I am embracing it!
I realise that opening myself to a wider audience, could also lead me to being vulnerable to those people who don’t share the same ethos as autism act, and while it is good to have healthy debate, I am determined not to lose the focus of autism act as a business, a facebook page, a website and a You Tube channel. I will stick to MY ethos – to support those of you supporting autistic children and young people in the way that I feel is right and in the way that I want to drive things forward.
Wish me luck! I am not sure if the world is really ready for an autism act You Tube channel but I guess I will soon find out!