Specialisterne: leveraging the unique skills of Autistics at competitive market terms

[Visionary7903]

Specialisterne (‘the Specialists’ in Danish) seeks to harness strengths that many people with Autism Spectrum Disorders possess - good attention to fine details, precision, and high tolerance for repetitive tasks. Their consultants bring the joy of work into areas where it is often missing today. Similarly Strokes of Genius seeks to harness the artistic abilities of those with Autism.
(sources: Human Resource Executive Online - Story; Strokes of Geniusea)

Chicago-based Project Onward is another organisation like Strokes of Genius - however only about a third of the Project Onward artists are autistic. One of the artists with Autism that the program represents is Louis DeMarco, who has a very complicated imaginary world that he depicts in his drawings…

…Art by Project Onward participants offers a window onto autism and the other conditions that inform it, [Program Director, Rob Lentz] says. One example he cites is the work of Louis DeMarco, whom Lentz calls a “true savant”—a person with islands of extraordinary ability. At 25, DeMarco writes music and plays in a rock band. He’s also a gifted mimic with near-perfect recall of sounds and voices—stimuli that can claim his attention at any instant. Confronted with disorderly and often threatening commotion, he’s created a series of “Cloud Charts” in which various behaviors and states of mind—obsession, mumbles, laziness, burps—are depicted as puffs of different colors. “Head Pressures” is olive green, “Distraction” is red. In a self-portrait, DeMarco wears a shiny orange hard hat that he says guards him against any attempt to interfere with his thoughts and memories. And a group of pieces depicts his imaginary island kingdom of Loudemar, which has a fortress at its center surrounded by a border guard of talking animal “protectors.”…

Here is a link to some of DeMarco’s artwork: Project Onward | Artists

DeMarco is also the bassist in the band, DHF Express (seen performing here): DHF Express - DESIRE - YouTube

(sources: Talented artists with disabilities excel in program | abc7chicago.com; Outside the Lines | The Arts | Chicago Reader)