Building Neurodivergent-Affirming Cultures of Regulation: Reflections from a Cavendish Space Workshop held with Stimpunks Community in our Campfire session, 11th January 2026
By Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms), Co-Creative Director of Stimpunks
On 11th January 2026, I had the joy of sharing a Cavendish Space workshop with the Stimpunks community. We gathered not simply to talk about regulation, but to practice it together – through shared stories, sensory play, choice, and relational presence. The session was designed to model what we were exploring: how neurodivergent cultures of regulation can be grown when environments adapt to our nervous systems and needs, rather than expecting us to change or adapt to environments.
From the outset, participation was framed as flexible and self-directed and everything was optional. People were invited to move, stim, rest, listen, type, speak, turn cameras on or off, and engage in whatever ways supported their bodyminds in that moment. This was not an accessibility add-on; it is always the heart of our Stimpunks shared spaces.
Regulation is treated not as an individual skill to perform, but as something that emerges through our interdependent relationships, co-regulation, sensory conditions, and having agency and autonomy.
This presentation was based on a workshop I delivered as part of a research project looking at ‘Building Neurodivergent-Affirming Cultures of Regulation: A Neurodivergent Perspective’. This project is led by Dr Amy Skinner, Associate Professor in Co-Production in Mental Health Research at York St John University and Kay Louise Aldred, Development Lead at Neurodiverse Connection, where we are exploring how regulation is experienced by Neurodivergent people, using creative and collaborative methods.
Find out more about the research project here:
https://ndconnection.co.uk/blog/call-for-participants
What Do We Mean by Regulation?
We began by reframing regulation itself. In neurodivergent contexts, regulation is not simply about “being calm” on our own. It is embodied, sensory, relational, environmental, and interdependent. It is shaped by whether we feel safe in our bodies, whether our sensory needs are met, whether our communication styles are respected, and whether our nervous systems are allowed to move flexibly rather than being held in constant vigilance or suppression.
Neuronormative environments often deny us agency over our bodies and invalidate our ways of regulating. As Kay Aldred reminds us in their book Embodied Education, there is no learning or creativity without the body. Regulation, in this sense, is not a luxury; it is a fundamental human need. It is the ongoing process by which our physical, emotional, sensory, cognitive, and psychological systems find enough balance to engage, connect, and create.
Cavendish Space: From Henry Cavendish to Neuroqueer Learning Environments
The concept of Cavendish Space was developed by Ryan Boren after reading Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes and reflecting on the life of Henry Cavendish, the eighteenth-century scientist whose brilliance coexisted with profound social and sensory differences. Cavendish was likely Autistic, he was intensely solitary, deeply focused, and needed predictability, control over his environment, and freedom from constant social demands to perform or work.
What allowed Cavendish to flourish was not that he learned to conform, but that his environment tolerated difference and met his needs. He had the space to withdraw, the protection to work alone, and the autonomy to think in his own ways as and when he needed to – all of which comes with a lot of privilege which we discussed and acknowledged. Silberman’s reframing – from “What is wrong with this person?” to “What does this person need from their environment?” – became a turning point for us as a team to reflect on and embed into our own work and community practice. Ryan Boren (Founder of Stimpunks) has carried this question forward into what he and our team have named and developed as Cavendish Space: a way of describing and designing environments that adapt to neurodivergent nervous systems rather than forcing neurodivergent people to adapt to rigid, sensory-hostile, socially coercive spaces.
Cavendish Space is the relational space where conditions, context, and capacities interact.
Through collaboration with me at Autistic Realms and later through our joint chapter on Neuroqueer Learning Spaces for Nick Walker’s upcoming Neuroqueer Theory and Practice book, Cavendish Space has become a shared framework for naming psychologically and sensorily safe environments that support neurodivergent flourishing. It is embedded into our community Discord server and in the ways we develop our work, it is a framework we are all living within our families, the ways we work and how we regulate together and by ourselves.
Cavendish Spaces are spaces that support intermittent collaboration rather than constant interaction, flow states rather than relentless interruption, embodiment and co-regulation rather than suppression, cognitive liberty rather than enforced sameness, neurological pluralism rather than narrow norms, and niche construction rather than one-size-fits-all design. In these spaces, flow is understood not as an individual trait, but as something that emerges when rhythms, relationships, and sensory conditions align. They give people time to process in their own way and in their preferred spaces of what feels good at that moment.
Campfires, Watering Holes, and Caves
To ground Cavendish Space in something cross-cultural, we explored the foundations of primordial learning spaces: campfires, watering holes, and caves. Long before the classrooms and offices of capitalist society, humans learned and regulated through a rhythm of shared gathering, social exchange, and quiet retreat. Each of these spaces supports different nervous system states, and all are necessary and are reflected in the concepts of Caves, Campfires and Watering Holes.
Campfires are spaces of shared meaning and orientation. They offer gentle framing, storytelling, and predictability, which can be deeply regulating for Autistic and neurodivergent people by reducing uncertainty and cognitive load.
Caves are spaces of solitude and sensory autonomy. They allow withdrawal without stigma, rest without explanation, and deep focus without interruption. From a polyvagal perspective, caves support nervous systems to move out of threat responses and into states of safety and restoration. For many neurodivergent people, they are not optional extras but essential conditions for wellbeing.
Watering holes sit between the two. They are social but not overwhelming, supporting co-regulation through parallel presence, body doubling, shared interests, stimming together, and quiet companionship. These are spaces where neurodivergent love languages – info-dumping, parallel play, rhythmic movement, deep presence without pressure are not only permitted but valued as forms of care.
Regulation, we reflected, is not about staying in one state. It is about being able to move flexibly between these spaces. When cultures and communities make room for campfires, caves, and watering holes, our ‘windows of tolerance’ widen, and with them the possibilities for learning, creativity, and connection expand.
Regulation as Relational Safety
At the heart of Cavendish Space is a simple but profound question: do we feel safe with ourselves, and do we feel safe with others? For many neurodivergent people, connection has historically come with correction, misattunement, or pressure to perform. Over time, this erodes nervous system safety and leads to masking, fragmentation, and exhaustion.
In the workshop, we named neurodivergent ways of connecting – sharing passions, being alongside rather than face-to-face, communicating through text or movement, regulating through rhythm and repetition – as co-regulatory practices rather than social deficits. When these ways of being are honoured, safety increases. And when safety increases, so does capacity: for trust, for learning, for joy, for collective imagination.
At the heart of Cavendish Space is a simple but profound question: do we feel safe with ourselves, and do we feel safe with others?
Helen Edgar
Practising a Watering Hole: Making Sensory Sock Balls Together
Rather than only talking about these ideas, we moved through them experientially. In a watering hole space, participants made sensory sock balls together using simple materials.
First we all played and explored the different materials to fill our sensory socks – running our fingers through dried lentils, crunching popcorn and exploring other fillings such as warm cherry stones, which smelt lovely!
Some people chatted, some typed, some stayed quiet, some moved around, some focused deeply on the textures and weights in their hands. Presence itself became the practice as we explored in our own ways and followed either the visual instructions or body doubling to create a sensory sock ball together on video.
From there, people were invited to choose: remain in the social space or move into their own cave for quiet sensory regulation. In cave time, attention could rest on the sensory object, on music, on movement, on stillness, on whatever the body asked for. There was no expectation for anyone to be productive, responsive, or visible.
We then returned to the campfire for reflection, gathering what had been felt and noticed rather than analysing or performing. What supported regulation? Which spaces felt most nourishing? How did choice and autonomy shape the experience of safety?
Growing Neurodivergent-Affirming Cultures
The Cavendish Space framework is not only about individual comfort, it is also about building neurodivergent culture and community access. It asks what might change in our classrooms, workplaces, families, and in-person and online communities if we intentionally built in caves as well as meeting rooms, softened campfires, and valued watering holes as sites of real connection and co-regulation.
To build neurodivergent-affirming cultures of regulation is to recognise that belonging does not require self-erasure of our neurodivergent identities. It is about understanding that safety is relational, sensory, and environmental. We need to design spaces where difference is expected, where autonomy is protected, and where our nervous systems are supported in finding their own rhythms of engagement and rest, enabling us to be creative.
The Stimpunks community has long been a place where these principles are lived, not just theorised. Sharing this workshop felt like returning ideas to the soil these ideas grew from: a collective commitment to neuroqueer, relational, embodied ways of learning and being together. We hope you find our training resources valuable. Feel free to use and share with your own communities, and edit as needed.
Find out more:
A note on influences: Relational Pattern Languages and Indigenous Influence
