Thank you for making our 2025 show such an incredible success!
Our event of the year at Coventry Building Society Arena was a huge hit — and we’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be returning to the same venue in 2026!
Save the Date: 14th July 2026
Show Hours: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Feel free to arrive at any time during the day — there’s no need to be there right at the start.
The 2026 show will feature a bustling exhibition floor packed with organisations offering advice, support, products, and services tailored to the neurodivergent community. Plus, enjoy a full schedule of insightful seminars running throughout the day across two dedicated seminar rooms.
Features; Quiet Room, Exhibition Café, Breakout Areas, Unlimited Seminars, Device Charging
If you’re thinking of visiting the Midlands you can connect here from London in just 55 minutes and you can also explore nearby Birmingham or Coventry for it’s vibrant and multicultural food scene, but don’t forget to visit the shows whilst you’re here!
We can’t wait to welcome you back!
Parking; The Nearest Car Park is on site – Car Park B
PREBOOK YOUR PARKING BY CLICKING HERE. USE PROMO CODE NNS2026 FOR 50% OFF PARKING
Entrance; Visitors head to the main check in at the registration desk located near the South Entrance / West Stand to the main hall. The nearest car park is Car Park B.
A Google link pin can be seen to view the entry doors; https://maps.app.goo.gl/JmhxkwGGZ34zoDWQ8
***TICKETS NOW ON SALE!***
To see what to expect, take a look at our Midlands show guide from last year by clicking the guide above.
2026 Seminar Sponsor
Midlands Seminar Line Up
Seminar Room 1
10:00am
Cathy Wassell;
The Haven by Autistic Girls Network;
Inclusive Education and Support for Neurodivergent Learners
This presentation provides an overview of creating truly inclusive educational environments where neurodivergent learners can flourish. We'll explore key principles of neurodiversity-affirming practice, moving beyond awareness to action.
The session will emphasise the importance of understanding individual strengths, fostering positive learning identities, and building collaborative partnerships between educators, families, and support professionals.
We will also give practical examples of how these principles are applied within The Haven, an online school designed specifically for neurodivergent learners.
10:30am
Stephanie Jones;
Solicitor from HCB Solicitors;
How to secure an IDP;
How To Secure Funding For Your Child With SENs
Join one of the leading legal firms in the UK to hear how to secure funding for your child with special educational needs. Specialists from HCB Solicitors will explain how Educational Health and Care Plans and IDPs work and how this skilled and well practised firm will support your family to obtain the support you need.
This is a practical guide for parents and carers on securing a robust IDP, with step‑by‑step advice, FAQs, and a live Q&A.
*KEYNOTE SPEAKER*
11:00am
Lavinia Dowling;
The M Word CiC;
Self-harming behaviour and suicidal thoughts are considered extreme but how come we get there?
Let me talk you through stages as an experienced Mental Health nurse well versed in the challenges and supporting many clients every day. Mental health is still heavily stigmatised but I am here to help you consider how we all need to be able to read our own mental health and consider what we need to do to help reduce either self-harming behaviour or suicidal thoughts. This is a thought provoking journey for many to consider either for themselves or for close relatives and friends who are deemed vulnerable. It is not meant to scare but rather be informative and generate thought provoking understandings to help you more. Plus, whilst many people do not wish to talk about it, I do, as if we talk about it, it is more out in the open and less scary.
11:30am
Rory Matthews;
Booost Education;
No Budget? No Problem! Everyday Tech Tips for Neurodivergent Learners
Who says you need fancy software to study smarter?
From YouTube to ChatGPT, this session explores how everyday (and free!) tech can support focus, memory, and motivation — especially for neurodivergent minds.
Don't miss this informative session from Booost Education on technology for neurodivergent minds.
12:00pm
Sarah Osborne, BA(Hons) mBANT rCNHC;
SO Nutrition;
Building Resilience with Diet and Nutrition for Neurodivergence
This empowering seminar offers valuable insights, tools, and actionable strategies to enhance resilience through balanced eating while respecting your unique needs. Led by a nutritionist and emotional eating practitioner who runs a neurodivergent nutrition clinic, this seminar will present the latest evidence-based approaches for fostering a healthier, more resilient relationship with food.
12:30pm
Maddi and Justine;
Onyx Therapy; Thinking About Thinking: Using Metacognition to Support Regulation and Self-Advocacy
This seminar explores metacognition — the ability to notice, understand, and reflect on our own thinking, emotions, and bodily states — and why it is a foundational skill for emotional regulation, executive functioning, and self-advocacy. Led by clinicians from Onyx Therapy, this session will break down what metacognition really is (beyond buzzwords), why it matters, and how it can be taught explicitly and safely. We will explore how developing metacognitive awareness helps people recognise early signs of dysregulation, understand what supports they need, and communicate these needs with confidence — rather than relying on crisis-based responses. The seminar will include practical, neuroaffirming strategies that can be used in classrooms, homes, ARPs, and EOTAS contexts. Attendees will also be introduced to Onyx Therapy’s metacognition-focused resources, designed to support reflection, regulation, and self-advocacy in ways that are accessible, strengths-based, and respectful of neurodivergent experiences.
1:00pm
George Georgiou; Mind Your ADHD
Stop Suffering With ADHD. Start Mastering It
This talk is for the professional, business owner, engineer, or high-achiever who looks successful on the outside but feels exhausted, inconsistent, or at war with their own mind.
For the first time, George, the founder of the worldwide recognised and accredited Mind Your ADHD Academy shares how ADHD nearly cost him everything, including his health, future family, and sense of self worth and how rewiring subconscious patterns changed it all.
Attendees leave with a clear three-step framework to eliminate daily ADHD struggles, regain emotional control and focus, and finally turn ADHD into an effortless advantage in life, career, and business.
2:00pm
Thomas Jackson:
Remtek Workplace
Unlocking Potential: The Benefits of Personalised Assistive Technology Training
In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, personalised assistive technology training has become a cornerstone for enhancing individual capabilities and fostering inclusive environments.
This seminar will explore the transformative impact of tailored training programmes designed to meet the unique needs of each user.
2:30pm
Pip Help CiC;
Important Information Concerning PiP Applications
Seminar Information Coming Soon
3:00pm
Hayley Clark, Joanne Beecham; Access 2 Learn; Harrison's Story - a Voice for the Unheard
Using a lived experience to show how early diagnosis, early intervention, and early support can be empowering and enabling in creating a confident and positive learning journey. A brief understanding of how this ties to the company's mission and the services they offer.
3:30pm
Brain in Hand
Seminar information coming soon
Seminar Room 2
10:00am
Dr Zoe McGovern & Dr Jessica Donohoe;
Autism Assessment Hub;
Beyond the Stereotype; Recognising Subtle and Masked Neurodivergent Presentations
This session explores best practices in the assessment and identification of neurodivergence in individuals whose presentations may not align with conventional or stereotypical profiles. Not everyone with autism or ADHD fits the well-known stereotypes. Some individuals; especially girls, women, and those who internalise their difficulties can go unnoticed for years, often because they work hard to mask their struggles or present in less obvious ways. This session brings together clinical best practice and real-world insight to explore how neurodivergent traits can be hidden or misunderstood. We’ll look at how masking, gender, mental health and internal coping styles can shape how autism and ADHD are expressed and why these differences matter when it comes to recognition, diagnosis, and support. Whether you’re a clinician involved in assessments or a family member supporting someone who may be neurodivergent, this session will help you understand what subtle or non-stereotypical neurodivergent presentations can look like, why some individuals are missed, misdiagnosed, or misunderstood and how we can improve assessment, communication, and support for those who don’t 'fit the mould'.
10:30am
Amy Dalwood-Fairbanks;
Magic Minds Hypnotherapy;
After School Meltdowns to Moments of Connection
In this seminar, Amy from Magic Minds Family Hypnotherapy explores the common experience of after-school meltdowns in neurodivergent children and how to respond with calm and compassion. She explains the underlying causes of these emotional explosions, and highlights the vital role of co-regulation to help the child regain control. Amy introduces the After-School Meltdown Toolkit, a set of simple, soothing tools designed for both parents and children to use in these challenging moments. With a focus on hypnotherapy, she demonstrates how brief, calming techniques can support both emotional regulation and meaningful connection. Parents will leave with practical strategies and a hopeful message: by being present and regulated themselves, they can transform meltdowns into moments of connection.
*MEDIA PARTNER*
11:00am
SENDcast Podcast
2026 Seminar Description Coming Soon
11:30am
Anita Davies; Harnessing Your ADHD Brain
Join us for a seminar designed to show you that an ADHD brain is far from broken. We'll discuss how neurotypical thinking often doesn't suit our minds and explore how it feels to experience controlled ADHD. We'll discuss strategies to leverage the unique strengths of ADHD, minimising overwhelm and frustrations. This session offers valuable insights for embracing and optimising your ADHD brain.
12:00pm
Attuned Approach; Neurodiversity Coach Training
Seminar information coming soon
12:30pm
Greer Jones;
The Unfinished Idea; 3 Step Reset
When dysregulation hits, a child melts down, your brain blanks, or your body goes into fight, flight, or freeze. This seminar is not about fixing everything. It is about finding your footing. Greer Jones shares a simple 3-step reset you can use in real time to move from overwhelmed to steadier. You will learn how to spot early signs, downshift your nervous system, and choose a next step that protects connection, safety, and dignity. No perfect calm required, just a pathway back. Designed for parents raising neurodivergent children. You will leave with simple phrases to use and a take-home reset prompt you can screenshot.
1:00pm
Julia Roncella;
Fontana Dyslexia Solutions;
The Importance of Workplace Assessments; Enabling Inclusivity
This session will cover;
What are Workplace Assessments?
The disadvantages of not having Workplace Assessments - for the employer and employee
How can they be accessed?
Examples of Reasonable Adjustments
In-house Workplace Assessor Groups
Benefits of Workplace Assessments - for the employer and employee
1:30pm
Jamie Denyer;
Avengers - END GAME
After the success of last years talks called “Assembling the avengers” Jamie Captain America Denyer is back with a new seminar called “The Avengers: Infinity war”
Talking about how to use your Avengers superpowers to battle back against all the Thanos’s you face in your life.
This talk gives you the belief & know how that as Neurodiverse superhero’s you really can make a change in this world, even whilst facing up to your insecurities and dealing with them like the villain’s they are.
The most vulnerable and transparent talk to date.
We’ve already assembled, now it’s time to fight the infinity war for change.
2:00pm
Helen Rees; Neuroble; Supporting Neurodivergent Individuals at Work and in Life: Executive Functions in Action
Executive Function (EF) challenges are a key, but often invisible barrier faced by many neurodivergent adults, impacting wellbeing, productivity, and inclusion in workplaces, businesses, and daily life. In this session, Helen Rees, founder of Neuroble, explores how strengths-based support can empower neurodivergent individuals to thrive.
Drawing on both lived experience and professional coaching expertise, Helen will share practical, brain-friendly strategies that individuals, professionals, and organisations can use to better support EF needs - helping to create environments where neurodivergent people can truly flourish.
2:30pm
Darren Glencross;
Beacon Within;
Finding Your Orbit: Understanding Yourself Through a Lived Neurodivergent Lens
Many neurodivergent people grow up feeling different without fully understanding why. In this honest and reflective talk, Darren Glencross shares his late diagnosis journey and introduces Inner Orbit, a lived-experience framework designed to help people better understand themselves. Rather than focusing on deficits, this session explores identity, emotional intensity, burnout and self-acceptance through a practical and human lens. Darren offers a grounded perspective for neurodivergent individuals, families and professionals who want clearer language, deeper self-understanding and a more compassionate way of navigating life.
3:00pm
Lisa Pinkerton;
Widgit Software;
Visual Communication as a Neurodivergent Toolkit: Empowering Understanding, Independence and Confidence
Lisa will explore how inclusive communication
empowers neurodivergent learners to thrive in education and beyond. She will
demonstrate how Widgit can become a practical, flexible part of a personal toolkit —
supporting clarity, reducing cognitive load and building independence. Through
consistent visual support using Widgit Symbols and tools, learners can strengthen
understanding, express themselves with confidence and navigate daily demands
more easily.
For many neurodivergent individuals, including those with
communication differences, symbol support is not just helpful but transformative —
creating accessible environments where strengths are recognised and every learner
can participate and succeed.
3:30pm
Mindiverse
Seminar Information Coming Soon
Seminar Room 3
10:00am
Bethann Siviter;
“This talk last Five Minutes”: Communication, Clarity, and Social Vernacular
Should important communication rely on unspoken assumptions? This session explores how communication using “social vernacular” — language that depends on shared, implicit understanding rather than precise meaning — can break down, particularly for neurodivergent individuals in healthcare settings. Phrases like “I’ll be back in five minutes” — when “five minutes” doesn’t mean five actual minutes — can create confusion and erode trust. Using real-world examples, this talk reveals how miscommunication arises, the harm it causes, and why clarity matters. It makes a compelling case for a clear, consistent “professional vernacular,” encouraging us to mean what we say, say what we mean, and build shared understanding, trust, and autonomy.
11:00am
Rachael Malthouse; Building Jam Up!: A Parent’s Story of Creating a Digital Platform to Support Children with Additional Needs (Including Neurodiversity)
This seminar shares the journey behind Jam Up!, a digital platform developed from lived experience to support children with additional needs (including neurodiversity). It shares how Jam Up! was co-developed with families to deliver support around daily tasks like getting dressed and cleaning teeth, and the realities of moving from an idea to building a digital product.
12:00pm
Charis Hawkley;
Dyspraxia Magazine;
My Life as a Neurodivergent Woman
I am dyslexic, dyspraxic and autistic and will be talking about my experiences, and how these conditions affect my daily life, and in my sport, as well as the difference it makes to be a woman with these conditions (such as the diagnostics being framed around males, and the different ways the conditions present in women).
I will be discussing some of my work for the community, such as my journalism and work with various groups.
12:30pm
Henry Muller;
The Internal ADHD Experience - What does it feel like to have ADHD in your school years and what helped me
Henry Muller – featured in the BBC documentary Inside Our ADHD Minds, will speak about what ADHD really feels like from the inside and how small changes in adult responses can make a meaningful difference. He explores the disconnect between what people see on the outside of an ADHD child vs what that young person is experiencing on the inside. Through vivid explanation and lived experience, he helps audiences understand how that misunderstanding can lead to shame, isolation and underperformance and how we can bridge that gap with new mindsets and strategies.
1:00pm
Dr Claire Norman-Maillet;
Trying to Ssssspeak “Properly”: When C-c-c-communication Doesn’t Fit the Rules
Many people feel pressure to change how they speak to fit in - whether that’s slowing down, hiding differences, or trying to sound more “fluent.” Drawing on academic research, professional and lived experience, Dr Claire Norman-Maillet explores what that looks like in real life, why it can be exhausting and what happens when different communication styles clash. As a counter-fraud expert, academic and individual with a stammer and ADHD, she challenges the idea that there is a “right” way to communicate and invites us to rethink what we mean by sounding “normal”.
3:30pm
Bryony Bean;
Taking Your Own Advice
After spending several years advising people how to advocate for themselves, and giving out tips on the most efficient ways to study, the experience of being a neurodivergent student came as more of a shock than it should have.
Realising that the standard one-size-fits-all advice does not apply to you forces creativity. In this seminar I’ll discuss unconventional study aids as well as tips on how to advocate for yourself as an adult in education with additional needs.
2025
Sophia Grech International Opera Singer; Finding My Voice Through Singing
Sophia Grech is an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano with a career spanning three decades. She has been featured and reviewed in the world’s press including newspapers and magazines, having also given television and radio interviews. She has won great acclaim for her performances at leading concert halls, opera houses and international festivals worldwide; leading to regular invitations to give masterclasses around the world since graduating from the Royal College of Music in 1995. In 2015 Sophia was diagnosed with autism and is now an appointed Ambassador on behalf of associated organisations worldwide alongside her artistic career. "As a child I used musical sounds singing to express myself verbally as spoken word didn't mean anything to me. I basically learnt emotional skills from listening to music. My presentation takes listeners on a journey from my childhood through to how I managed to have an international career as an opera singer. I cover career challenges and how I have navigated my way using some naturally learnt coping strategies."
2025<br
Barbara Perry & Lucy Owen; Reachout Educational
Switch It On: Creative Strategies to Empower Neurodivergent Learners
Join Reachout Educational at the National Neurodiversity Show for an engaging and practical seminar designed to equip educators, parents, home-educators and tutors with simple yet creative strategies that break down barriers to learning for neurodivergent students.
This session will explore innovative techniques that can be implemented at a whole-class level, ensuring all learners benefit from inclusive approaches.
2025
Kate Longworth & Neeki Armani; Gaia Learning;
The Power of Personalised Learning Pathways - Engaging Neurodivergent Learners
The seminar will provide insight, tips and advice to parents, educators and carers on things they can do to engage neurodivergent learners in interest-based learning and create learning pathways that work for them.
2025
Matthew Weaver, Senior Partnerships Manager, SOS Silence of Suicide
OPEN Conversations: How to Notice, Say Something, and Support Someone’s Mental Health
We all want to help when someone’s struggling, but it can be hard to know what to say.
This session from the national charity SOS Silence of Suicide introduces the OPEN model, a simple framework to help you notice when someone might be finding things hard, pause before jumping in, and start conversations that genuinely support, rather than overwhelm.
It’s not clinical. It’s not complicated. It’s a practical neurodiversity-aware approach to making a difference.
Whether you’re a line manager, colleague, community volunteer or friend, this session will build your confidence to say something when it matters, even if you don’t have the perfect words.
2025
Sammi Fitz-Symonds & Tom Rainey;
Accessible Futures;
What If Systems Were Built For Us? The Story Behind Cognitive Access Design
Join the neurodivergent team behind Accessible Futures Group as they share personal experiences of navigating education and work—and why those challenges led them to create Cognitive Access Design. This session introduces Cognitive Access Design as a practical framework for reducing cognitive load, supporting executive functioning, and designing workplaces, services, online spaces, and learning environments that actually work—for neurodiverse people, and ultimately, for everyone.
*Details and descriptions of seminars are provided by each presenter and are subject to change.
Exhibitor Line Up
Getting here
Leave the M6 at junction 3. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto the A444 signposted Coventry. After approximately 1 mile, take the exit towards Rowleys Green. At the roundabout, take the 3rd exit onto Jimmy Hill Way/A444. The Coventry Building Society Arena will be on the left.
Leave the M6 at junction 3. At the roundabout, take the 4th exit onto the A444 signposted Coventry. After approximately 1 mile, take the exit towards Rowleys Green. At the roundabout, take the 3rd exit onto Jimmy Hill Way/A444. The Coventry Building Society Arena will be on the left.
There are regular bus services to The Coventry Building Society Arena from Coventry City Centre. Bus numbers 4, 5, and 20 stop nearby, providing convenient access. Please contact National Express Coventry for further information.
The Coventry Building Society Arena is a 5-minute walk from Coventry Arena railway station. Regular trains run from Coventry railway station, which has connections to London, Birmingham, and other major cities. Please contact National Rail for further information.
Birmingham Airport is approximately 20 miles away from The Coventry Building Society Arena, with good public transport links, hire cars, and taxi services available. For those arriving by helicopter, arrangements can be made in advance.
The Coventry Building Society Arena Address:
Judds Lane
Coventry
CV6 6GE
Sat. Nav. Postcode: CV6 6GE
Parking is available on-site.
When you arrive, take the lift or stairs to the appropriate level and follow signs for your designated suite or area.
Midlands Radio Partner
Sparkflame Radio will be at this show covering the event, and speaking to exhibitors and visitors.