2026-02-13 (Marta Rose)

Divergent Design Studios is community of neurodivergent creatives. It began in September of 2021 and was launched on Mighty Networks. Before that I had been trying to sell courses to neurodivergent creatives, but found that I didn’t really enjoy the constant marketing and hustle of selling, especially since my intended audience are generally quite poor, being both disabled and artists (quite a combination!) I started out charging $20/month for membership, but even that proved too much for many in the community, so now we have a sliding scale of $5 to $29, but I also give out free memberships to anyone who asks, as we don’t want finances to be a barrier.

DDS began primarily by offering weekly Peer Support sessions on topics related to our struggles as neurodivergent people and as artists; near-daily body doubling sessions (which we call Studio Time), and a series of workshops I had developed around what we call Spiral Time, Shame, Design Thinking and the ways the concept of Mise en Place can be helpful to neurodivergent artists. Since then, our offerings have grown organically, with community members offering various ongoing events that ebb and flow depending on interest/bandwidth. Among those has been a weekly session on food and cooking, a 1:1 listening turns peer support, interior and garden design, somatic healing, literary salons, craftivism, a writing group, journaling sessions around the week’s peer support topic, and various reading groups. These come and go and we hold them lightly, and don’t take it personally when interest wanes, knowing that new things will emerge and old things might reemerge. All of our events are hosted on Zoom.

Peer Support is really the beating heart of DDS, and we have two sessions per week on the same topic, usually generated by the community, often in the chat of previous Peer Support sessions which is often as active as the spoken discussion. We have a set of Peer Support guiding values (see below), which emerged organically and then were written down by a member. We now read these at the beginning of each session, and that has become a comforting ritual for us.

Another beloved ritual is a quarterly salon, on the solstices and equinox, when anyone who wants to shares their creations, no matter what they are. People read poems, show us photos, paintings, things they have sewn, sing songs—we’ve even had people share their Sims and animal crossing islands!

We haven’t had a lot of conflict, but when we have had, we haven’t really known how to deal with it well, so recently a conflict resolution working group has formed to create structures for healthy ways of dealing with conflict.

Recently we have expanded to Signal chats, which have increased engagement considerably—we have a hangout chat, and accountability buddies chat, an activism chat, a digital decluttering chat, and more. These have all been organically created by members of the community.

We are not large, thought we have far more members than those who are actively engaged. Those who do engage are very committed, and the community, though small, is robust.

The other community I just recently began is the Spiral Lab Collective, which is open to anyone in DDS who wants to join, and which is mostly housed right now in a Signal chat. We meet occasionally on Zoom. We just began publishing The Spiral Lab Magazine, which is the latest iteration of my substack newsletter, The Spiral Lab. We just recently published our first issue on the theme of Chaos, and we’re working on our second issue on the theme of Manifesto. This community is smaller and newer (we established ourselves in November of 2025 I think?), but we all know each other well and have a lot of trust already established through DDS. This is the community I would be eager to serve as a pilot DFOS community. We are holding goals and commitments (such as publishing schedules, free workshops, etc) very loosely and sort of making this up as we go. Eventually my dream, shared with many in the group, is to become a press and art gallery, publishing books and hosting art drops. But that’s a way off. I have in mind to turn several of my workshops into books/workbooks, starting with Spiral Time. Again that’s a ways off.

In addition to all of this, I have taught my workshops outside of DDS, including at the invitation of the Glasgow Zine Library, and as part of a course I collaborated with two friends in offering three times over the past two years called Neuroqueering You Creative Practice. Quite of few “neuroqueerdos” have since become member of DDS and The Spiral Lab Collective.

DDS Peer Support Guiding Values:

We value all ways of showing up and sharing: camera on, camera off, verbally, in the chat. There is no need to share at all, just by being present we’re all part of the space and supporting each other. ~If you would like your message in the chat to be read aloud, simply add that to your share. If you want to speak but the conversation is moving very fast or you’re having trouble jumping in, raise your hand and the host will invite you to speak. ~ We value silence. If there is a natural pause after someone shares, it means that people are processing, thinking, gathering their thoughts for their own share, or typing in the chat. It never means that you said something wrong or awkward. People may also jump in immediately. That’s all part of the natural ebb and flow of the conversation. ~ There is no being late or leaving early. Feel free to come and go whenever, no need to explain or apologize, or to check out before leaving. ~ There is a weekly topic that serves as a starting point for shares. From there we spiral out and the conversation evolves naturally. Tangents and sidetracks are welcome and encouraged. ~ We are peers; we leave the professional ‘hats’ we might wear at the door. We do not speak from a place of authority and we do not give advice, although it is always appropriate to share what has worked in our own lives.