# Specialisterne: leveraging the unique skills of Autistics at competitive market terms **URL:** \ **Category:** Lounge\ **Created:** [May 10, 2011, 7:15am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/specialisterne-leveraging-the-unique-skills-of-autistics-at-competitive-market-terms/50245 "2011-05-10T07:15:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 88
**Author:** ![Visionary7903](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/45deac/32.png) [@Visionary7903](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Visionary7903)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/specialisterne-leveraging-the-unique-skills-of-autistics-at-competitive-market-terms/50245/88 "2011-12-09T04:34:26Z")
**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](http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/printstory.jsp?storyId=533322146); [Strokes of Geniusea](http://www.rcmautismnotebook.com/StrokesofGeniusea.html)) 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](http://www.projectonward.org/artists/louisdemarco) DeMarco is also the bassist in the band, DHF Express (seen performing here): [DHF Express - DESIRE - YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMiu1u9VhYg) (sources: [Talented artists with disabilities excel in program | abc7chicago.com](http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=resources/lifestyle_community&id=6697079); [Outside the Lines | The Arts | Chicago Reader](http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/project-onward-mentally-disabled-artists/Content?oid=2893272)) --- _[View the full topic](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/specialisterne-leveraging-the-unique-skills-of-autistics-at-competitive-market-terms/50245)._