Acknowledgements
When we put out calls for participants, we received expressions of interest from people with an intellectual disability and people on the autistic spectrum. Though we are well aware that they have radically different lived experiences, we worked individually throughout the intervention and reported their results in a format that could be used by policy makers and service providers.
We would like to thank our wide range of collaborators who contributed in both the ‘doing’ and the ‘thinking’ about what energy can be liberated during authentic encounters: the Think Differently Campaign team who not only supported this project but also engaged in our quest and made meaningful contributions; Anna Pye who initiated some of the ideas on this project; Creative Waikato, Progress to Health, the Hamilton Residential Trust, Gillian Ingham, Alanna Cranston and The Network for Community Hospitality at the University of Waikato who enrolled volunteers for campus encounters and provided peer-academic consultation to develop some of the above ideas.
This work was supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development Thinking Differently Campaign under Grant MAD4-1081.