Recap: Neurodiversity Week 2025
With Neurodiversity Week 2025 having drawn to a close, we’d like to extend our thanks and appreciation to all the volunteers who made the events happen, to all the organizations we collaborated with, and last but not least, everyone in the community who attended, brought friends and family, spread the word, contributed to the raffle, provided encouragement, and everything in between! We’re pleased to announce that we had over 230 (unique!) attendees across 10 events, represented by Cornell students, staff members, visitors from other schools, and local families!
As a bonus, here are some event highlights from throughout the week! We hope you all have enjoyed this year’s celebration, and we look forward to seeing (and working with) many of you again next year!
Matinee: The Wild Robot
In what might be our largest ever iteration of this event, our celebration-opening Matinee was attended by over 60 people – audience members, including families and children, packed into the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Yarnell Lecture Hall to watch a screening of recent animated hit The Wild Robot.
Dimmed lights, acoustic dampening, and a nearby sensory room made this a sensory-friendly experience, complete with fidgets and refreshments on hand!
Building Belonging Fair
Our inaugural Building Belonging Fair brought together Cornell’s numerous support and service organizations and provided a relaxed, causal opportunity for students, staff, and community members to connect and share insights about their work.
The event was a success with twenty-three organizations participating! A full list of participating organizations can be found in the “Special Thanks” portion of this post.
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Story Night
In a panel-style event, audience members gathered around as five panelists discussed their experiences as neurodivergent people. Over three hours, the panelists (who including a high school student, a Cornell alum, and several current Cornell students) took turns sharing the joys and challenges of their neurotypes, expressing the ways in which they find community, and fielded questions.
Research Poster Session
Now in its third year, our research poster session brought together several groups of researchers who were neurodivergent or working on a neurodiversity-related project, offering an outlet for them to share their work with each other and with the wider community.
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Passionate Pursuits Night
A small, casual affair where invited presenters got a chance to dive deep into their interests with visiting guests! With topics ranging from puzzles to crochet to birding, visitors from within and outside of Cornell alike got to spend a nice, relaxed evening filled with conversation, along with popcorn and other refreshments.
Special thanks to Perdita Das & Bethe House for working hard to get everything ready!
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Sensory Friendly Spaces Showcase
To conclude our celebration, we invited community members to a special exhibit to explore what a “sensory-friendly” space looks and feels like. Items from our Sensory Room and Pop-Up Sensory Room were on hand for guests to interact with. In addition, we made things fun by hosting a “Guess that Smell” and “Guess that Taste” activity!
Special thanks to Racker and the Human Centered Design Department for their collaboration on this event!
Special Thanks
