‘Building our own house’ as an insider-only Community-Partnered Participatory Research Council: Co-creating a safe space for Autistic knowledge production

Abstract

This paper describes and reflects on the first six meetings of a newly-established Autistic Community Council, founded to steer a participatory, longitudinal qualitative study investigating the reproductive health of Autistic people with wombs. The two key aims of these initial six meetings – involving four Autistic community leader members and three Autistic researchers – was to (i) guide the start of the project and the development of accessible recruitment materials for the future eight lay members and (ii) establish a safe space and a model of accessible communication.We draw on extracts from transcripts made during meetings, member ‘field’ notes and a reflexive co-writing practice to identify the ways in which a sense of safety was built during these first Community Council meetings. We explore what it means to be an insider-only Community Partnered Participatory Research Council and reflect on the praxis we developed to facilitate Autistic knowledge production