Deadline ERG Neurodiversity design competition: extended to Friday 27 June

Deadline design competition: extended to Friday 27 June 

All brains are different. This is called neurodiversity. Some brains operate significantly different than average. Those are collectively called neurodivergent. On Neurodiversity Pride Day (Monday 16 June 2025), the NWO/NWO-I Employee Resource Group (ERG) Neurodiversity invites you to celebrate with us that all brains are different. At a meet and greet on 16 June at NWO The Hague, Nikhef Amsterdam & NWO Utrecht, we invite everyone with a question or story about neurodiversity to come and talk to us. Additionally, we’re organizing a design competition around the theme: “How does my brain feel today?”. This is not just a design challenge, it is also a question many neurodivergent colleagues will ask themselves on their way to work. Will your brainchild win a prize!?

Design competition ‘Wear your mind on your sleeve’

To celebrate neurodiversity, the ERG is organizing a design competition. Everyone is welcome to take part! The brief: design a button badge around the theme “How does my brain feel today?”. Want to take part? You will find flyers with badge templates at a central location in your institute, at NWO the Hague or NWO Utrecht. Alternatively, you can download the flyer from the ERG Neurodiversity webpage or from Joost. You submit your design by returning the flyer to where it was distributed, or by emailing a digital copy to neurodiversity@nwo.nl. Deadline for submissions is extended to Friday 27 June, end of day (maximum 1 per person).

Download the flyer for the design competition (PDF) on the ERG Neurodiversity webpage.

Everyone wins: your unique button badge

All submitted designs will be made into a unique button badge after the closing date, and the finished badges will be sent back to your institute or domain/workplace for you to collect. Wearing the badge on your bag or coat not only enhances your outfit, it also shows your support for your (neurodivergent) colleagues. The most surprising design will win an additional prize!

ERG Neurodiversity meet and greet

On Monday 16 June 2025 the coordinators of the ERG will be on location in the Hague and Amsterdam to make your acquaintance, to exchange thoughts about neurodiversity, or to answer any questions you might have. Everyone is welcome! We hope through this we will all get to understand each other even better, or will find new ways to support one another. We look forward to welcoming you at:

• NWO the Hague, room 0.06, from 10:00 to 12:00 hrs.
• Nikhef, Amsterdam Science Park, Electron hall, from 14:00 to 16:00 hrs.
• NWO Utrecht, room 8.01 from 14:30 to 16:00 hrs.

Designing a badge and experiencing a creative block? Feel free to drop by then too! Maybe we can help you along.

Why this event?

Among many things, neurodiversity means that not everyone will approach a task, topic, or event in the same way, or have the same experience. For this reason, we’ve tried to make the competition format as open as possible. You can submit in person, digitally, and even anonymously, working in your own way, and at your own pace. Creativity might be a challenge for some colleagues, and feel uneasy. (Even though everyone has a creative side.) As similar sense of unease might be experienced by a neurodivergent colleague when asked to sit still in a meeting for two hours, or when invited on a team outing. In short: everyone has a capacity to flourish, but not everyone will reach this point in the same way.

Questions

In addition to the meet and greet or leaving feedback on the flyer, you can reach the ERG Neurodiversity at neurodiversity@nwo.nl. Do you identify as neurodivergent (or ally) and are you interested in becoming a member? You can sign up using the same email address.

More information about the ERG Neurodiversity can be found on the NWO-I website, or on our group on Joost.