From dark, sound-proofed rooms to clever storage solutions, families with autism and ADHD are finding inspired ways to adjust their environments

In the middle of Cherie Clonan’s bright Melbourne home sits a room in total darkness, “for our son to retreat to”, she says. “It’s all black in there. You wouldn’t believe it’s the same home!”

The space, lined with sound-blocking panels, is a sanctuary for her autistic son: a quiet cocoon for decompressing after school. “He loves to go in there to game online with his mates,” Clonan says.

Diagnosed autistic at 37, Clonan lives in a weatherboard cottage with her husband, Chris, and her two neurodivergent teenagers. Since buying the house five years ago, she has been reshaping it around their needs. “Our family’s split half-half – 50% sensory-seek versus sensory-avoidant,” she says. “I chase light. I love light-filled everything. But my son really is the opposite.”

From dark, sound-proofed rooms to clever storage solutions, families with autism and ADHD are finding inspired ways to adjust their environments

In the middle of Cherie Clonan’s bright Melbourne home sits a room in total darkness, “for our son to retreat to”, she says. “It’s all black in there. You wouldn’t believe it’s the same home!”

The space, lined with sound-blocking panels, is a sanctuary for her autistic son: a quiet cocoon for decompressing after school. “He loves to go in there to game online with his mates,” Clonan says.

Diagnosed autistic at 37, Clonan lives in a weatherboard cottage with her husband, Chris, and her two neurodivergent teenagers. Since buying the house five years ago, she has been reshaping it around their needs. “Our family’s split half-half – 50% sensory-seek versus sensory-avoidant,” she says. “I chase light. I love light-filled everything. But my son really is the opposite.”

From dark, sound-proofed rooms to clever storage solutions, families with autism and ADHD are finding inspired ways to adjust their environments

In the middle of Cherie Clonan’s bright Melbourne home sits a room in total darkness, “for our son to retreat to”, she says. “It’s all black in there. You wouldn’t believe it’s the same home!”

The space, lined with sound-blocking panels, is a sanctuary for her autistic son: a quiet cocoon for decompressing after school. “He loves to go in there to game online with his mates,” Clonan says.

Diagnosed autistic at 37, Clonan lives in a weatherboard cottage with her husband, Chris, and her two neurodivergent teenagers. Since buying the house five years ago, she has been reshaping it around their needs. “Our family’s split half-half – 50% sensory-seek versus sensory-avoidant,” she says. “I chase light. I love light-filled everything. But my son really is the opposite.”

They face long hours, mediocre pay and, at worst, no job, but their optimism is astonishing – let’s support them better

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

When I mentioned to colleagues in the NHS that I was helping with admissions interviews for medical students, several responded with the same wry smile and weary shrug: “Do they know what they’re getting into?” Anyone working with the health service over the past few decades has seen the job conditions get tougher, salaries stagnate and idealism erode within a crumbling system. Brexit, Covid, austerity and the rise in the cost of living haven’t helped.

From the students’ perspectives, they’ve gone through a lot to get here too. Not just the usual high-level academic performance and résumé-building either. This is a group who dealt with school closures and lockdowns during impressionable years, many come from crowded schools with little support and coaching, and yet they’ve found a way to persevere.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

They face long hours, mediocre pay and, at worst, no job, but their optimism is astonishing – let’s support them better

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

When I mentioned to colleagues in the NHS that I was helping with admissions interviews for medical students, several responded with the same wry smile and weary shrug: “Do they know what they’re getting into?” Anyone working with the health service over the past few decades has seen the job conditions get tougher, salaries stagnate and idealism erode within a crumbling system. Brexit, Covid, austerity and the rise in the cost of living haven’t helped.

From the students’ perspectives, they’ve gone through a lot to get here too. Not just the usual high-level academic performance and résumé-building either. This is a group who dealt with school closures and lockdowns during impressionable years, many come from crowded schools with little support and coaching, and yet they’ve found a way to persevere.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

They face long hours, mediocre pay and, at worst, no job, but their optimism is astonishing – let’s support them better

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

When I mentioned to colleagues in the NHS that I was helping with admissions interviews for medical students, several responded with the same wry smile and weary shrug: “Do they know what they’re getting into?” Anyone working with the health service over the past few decades has seen the job conditions get tougher, salaries stagnate and idealism erode within a crumbling system. Brexit, Covid, austerity and the rise in the cost of living haven’t helped.

From the students’ perspectives, they’ve gone through a lot to get here too. Not just the usual high-level academic performance and résumé-building either. This is a group who dealt with school closures and lockdowns during impressionable years, many come from crowded schools with little support and coaching, and yet they’ve found a way to persevere.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Young Vic theatre, London
Rajiv Joseph’s tale of a captive animal that returns from the dead after the 2003 invasion is bracingly unconventional

There is an exciting wildness to the European premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s surreal black comedy about the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Firstly, an animal is played on stage, a tiger shot in a Baghdad zoo that returns from the dead to haunt the US marine who pulled the trigger. Secondly, it talks. Wisecracks, in fact, and interrogates the existence of God. A twisted version of Life of Pi ? Certainly it’s less of a dream than a nightmare in which anything could happen.

And things do lurch from one thing to another with illogical effect. To add to the frisson of unpredictability, Kathryn Hunter performs as the tiger after David Threlfall bowed out, until further notice, due to illness. The part was played on Broadway in 2011 by Robin Williams but Hunter brings her own comic swagger.

Young Vic theatre, London
Rajiv Joseph’s tale of a captive animal that returns from the dead after the 2003 invasion is bracingly unconventional

There is an exciting wildness to the European premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s surreal black comedy about the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Firstly, an animal is played on stage, a tiger shot in a Baghdad zoo that returns from the dead to haunt the US marine who pulled the trigger. Secondly, it talks. Wisecracks, in fact, and interrogates the existence of God. A twisted version of Life of Pi ? Certainly it’s less of a dream than a nightmare in which anything could happen.

And things do lurch from one thing to another with illogical effect. To add to the frisson of unpredictability, Kathryn Hunter performs as the tiger after David Threlfall bowed out, until further notice, due to illness. The part was played on Broadway in 2011 by Robin Williams but Hunter brings her own comic swagger.

Young Vic theatre, London
Rajiv Joseph’s tale of a captive animal that returns from the dead after the 2003 invasion is bracingly unconventional

There is an exciting wildness to the European premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s surreal black comedy about the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Firstly, an animal is played on stage, a tiger shot in a Baghdad zoo that returns from the dead to haunt the US marine who pulled the trigger. Secondly, it talks. Wisecracks, in fact, and interrogates the existence of God. A twisted version of Life of Pi ? Certainly it’s less of a dream than a nightmare in which anything could happen.

And things do lurch from one thing to another with illogical effect. To add to the frisson of unpredictability, Kathryn Hunter performs as the tiger after David Threlfall bowed out, until further notice, due to illness. The part was played on Broadway in 2011 by Robin Williams but Hunter brings her own comic swagger.