Montreal school creating a ‘Juilliard for the neurodiverse’

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Summit School, a Montreal school serving a population with a range of neurodevelopmental conditions including autism, will become the site of Canada’s first creative arts centre for the neurodiverse.

About half of Summit’s 656 students, aged 4 to 21, are on the autism spectrum and others have conditions including cognitive challenges, behavioural issues and Down syndrome.

A capital campaign for the $15-million creative arts centre, spearheaded by a $3-million donation from the Azrieli Foundation, is underway; groundbreaking is set for this summer for the building, on Summit’s main campus in Ville St-Laurent.

A private school in the public interest established in 1963, Summit has long promoted creative and performing arts programming for its students. It has staged productions in venues around Montreal and, with the new building, will be able to stage them in-house.

The creative arts centre will house a gymnasium/performance space with a removable stage and full theatre lighting, music and media production studios, a visual arts studio and gallery space, and a dance and yoga studio.

On his watch, Summit students have performed at venues including the Centaur Theatre and the Segal Centre. The creative arts give them the opportunity to express themselves — and, in so doing, to bolster their self-esteem and confidence, Heffring said.

The new centre will also highlight Summit’s research component, the Summit Centre for Research, Education and Training (SCERT), established in 2016 as an engine for research into creativity in autism and other neurodiverse conditions and to introduce and apply interventions intended to address challenges faced by students.

Researchers at McGill and beyond are involved, along with teachers and other professionals within Summit. One project has to do with emotion regulation — the best thing to do is if someone is agitated or impulsive. “There are many manualized protocols out there for more typical kids,” Bertone said. “We are trying to adapt the protocols for kids who are less sociable, less language-based.”

One creative arts-specific project looks at how a goal-oriented physical activity program, such as learning karate moves, could improve behavioural and cognitive abilities in students and, by extension, academic performance.

In another, a neuroscientist is investigating whether a drum circle can help to regulate student stress and emotions and improve behaviour and cognitive abilities.

“Summit School played a crucial part in my life for many years,” said Steven Atme, a musician, composer and public speaker who was eight when he started there in 2001.

Atme has autism; he did not speak until he was 5 and he also had difficulty with comprehension and following directions. But he was curious about music. When he was 11, his father bought him an electric keyboard and he learned how to play by ear — and, later, to compose by ear.

Today Atme, 28, works as a creative arts teacher, teaching piano, singing and drama, and continues to compose and to give talks in which he tells his own story.