ABSTRACT
The chapter illustrates the contribution of arts-based methods to give voice to young people with cognitive disabilities and to investigate the psycho-emotional dimensions of disablism within their everyday lives. Drawing on the results of a comparative study on autistic children and adolescents and young people with Down syndrome, the text develops the concept of psycho-emotional disablism and its impact on people with cognitive disabilities’ self-perceptions and social identities. Moreover, it also discusses the involvement of cognitively disabled people within the research process and the role of arts-based methods in this context. Arts-based methods, and particularly visual and performative ones, resist binary thinking and provide alternative forms of expression to research subjects. Moreover, they are specifically effective in eliciting participants’ emotions, and this was a crucial aspect of dealing with a sensitive topic like disablism. Finally, arts-based methods open the possibility of putting the researchers’ assumptions into question and allow a small group of interviewees to challenge the negative images related to their condition, by referring to the neurodiversity approach.
