Specialist education · Accessibility-by-design · Relationship-led delivery
Neurodiversity Spark partnered with Lightyear Foundation to deliver a short series of hands-on, neuroinclusive STEM workshops at Longstone Special School, a specialist educational setting in Northern Ireland.
The workshops formed part of Lightyear Foundation’s wider commitment to inclusive science education, particularly for children and young people who are often excluded from traditional STEM learning environments.
Rather than delivering a pre-packaged programme, the focus was on creating accessible, engaging science experiences that worked with pupils’ sensory, communication, and movement needs, not against them.
Delivery took place within a real school environment, in close collaboration with staff who know their pupils deeply and understand the conditions required for learning to feel safe, meaningful, and achievable.
Spark facilitated a three-session STEM workshop series, adapting content in real time to support participation, curiosity, and regulation.
Spark’s role included:
Rather than delivering “activities”, Spark facilitated learning experiences, responding dynamically to what was happening in the room.
Across the three sessions, pupils engaged in ways that worked for them — moving, testing, collaborating, asking questions, and making sense of complex ideas without being funnelled into a single “correct” way of learning.
Staff insight and support were central to this success, helping create an environment that felt calm, safe, and genuinely inclusive.
As reflected in post-session feedback, engagement was driven not by novelty or performance, but by trust, accessibility, and respect for difference.
Workshops were designed around physical interaction, visual cues, and discovery-based learning, allowing pupils to engage through movement, touch, observation, and experimentation.
Activities included:
Facilitation was responsive. For example, physiological concepts such as heart rate, breathing, and stress regulation were introduced naturally through pupils’ physical engagement — supporting understanding without forcing compliance or stillness.
Crucially, learning was co-created in the moment, shaped by pupils’ questions, energy, and interests, rather than delivered as a fixed script.
The workshops supported meaningful engagement with STEM concepts in a way that felt accessible, affirming, and enjoyable for pupils.
For Spark, this work reinforced the value of:
This was relationship-led delivery and not a packaged intervention.
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