Neuroqueering belonging through participatory art.
We were never meant to do this alone.
Different on Purpose Arts (DOPA) brings together visual art, writing, movement, sound, sensory exploration, storytelling, conversation, performance, and collaborative play to create spaces where people are not simply invited to observe art, but to participate in making it.
The work is particularly informed by neurodivergent, disabled, queer, and other ways of being that are often asked to adapt themselves to the spaces they enter.
Here, the space adapts too, and in real time.
What We’re Making
Variations on Belonging:
A Creative Playground
A first imagining of the Creative Playground.
(Not a blueprint. Only a place to begin.)
Variations on Belonging: A Creative Playground is an evolving participatory arts installation exploring what happens when belonging becomes something we make together.
The space begins intentionally unfinished.
People entering it might draw, write, stitch, build, move, make sound, tell stories, play, contribute to shared installations, respond to the work of someone who came before them, or simply spend time witnessing what is being created.
There is no required sequence and no single correct way to participate.
Over time, the environment changes through the people who enter it—becoming a collective record of imagination, difference, relationship, and belonging.
Community Mind Labsâ„¢
These are gatherings embedded within DOPA’s participatory work.
They begin with a different question than most community conversations:
Instead of asking:
What do you think?
We ask:
What are we collectively trying to say?
Through art, writing, conversation, movement, objects, stories, and other forms of expression, participants explore what is emerging within a community without requiring everyone to communicate, process, or participate in the same way.
Community Mind Labs™ are part art-making, part collective inquiry, and part experiment in what becomes possible when meaning does not have to be produced alone. They are designed to notice and gather what has emerged in the community space — the ideas, questions, connections, and moments of resonance we want to carry forward as we continue making and belonging together.
Why This Work?
Much of contemporary life is organized around individual capacity: regulate yourself, manage yourself, communicate clearly, remain productive, become independent.
DOPA is interested in another possibility.
Human beings have always made culture, meaning, art, identity, memory, and community together. Many of the capacities we describe as individual are profoundly relational.
Our projects create temporary environments in which interdependence is not treated as failure and difference does not have to be translated into sameness before someone can participate.
The art is what gets made.
The larger experiment is what happens between us while we make it.
Help Us Build the First Playground
DOPA is currently developing the first Seattle iteration of
Variations on Belonging: A Creative Playground
Which will include Community Mind Labsâ„¢, community partnerships, accessibility planning, artist collaborations, and documentary photography and film.
We are currently seeking funding, fiscal sponsorship, community partners, venues, and collaborators to bring the first full-scale iteration to life.
About the Artist
Mural by Desmond Hansen (@desmondhansenart)
Mandy Parida (she/they) is a Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist, expressive arts practitioner, educator, and founder of Different On Purpose and Different On Purpose Arts. Her work explores belonging, neurodivergence, queerness, relational life, creativity, and the ways people make meaning together. They have more than two decades of experience facilitating individuals, families, and groups and have increasingly brought that relational background into participatory art, writing, visual storytelling, and community-based creative practice. Her current work asks what becomes possible when creative spaces are designed for multiple forms of communication, attention, participation, and connection rather than around a single idea of how people should engage. She is developing Variations on Belonging: A Creative Playground and Community Mind Labsâ„¢ as an evolving body of interdisciplinary social-practice work.