“Before I joined NLN, I was homeless for half a year, and I was dealing with some mental health issues. After seeing a therapist, they recommend that I go to NLN Arklow as a stepping stone. It was really to find somewhere to help me get back into life.
The compassion and understand of meeting you where you’re at – that was very important at NLN. You could do the work, and achieve your Level 3 or 4 certification, or you can even just go into the centre and be in a place where you’re comfortable, and be seen. The instructors taught us home-based activities, like cooking meals for ourselves. I was managing life skills again. At NLN, there’s no pressure, it’s not like being in some other educational settings, where it feels like you’re being funnelled through in order to a get a qualification.
We did art therapy and woodworking as part of the NLN course. You could pursue what you wanted. They would say ‘what would you like to make – let me help you’. It was very much for you. It was non-judgemental, and that meant being creative in a comfortable environment. That really pushed me into enjoying art again, wanting to create again, and be artistic again.
After NLN, I moved to Wicklow Further Education and Training Centre, then I studied at NCAD for four years. I am now presenting my Grad Show installation, which I would describe as an expanded experience. It’s a Virtual Reality experience, using a headset that contains 21 pieces of content, with sound attached to each piece. It’s deliberately overwhelming, to try to mimic what one’s brain is like with ADHD. Every piece of content is to do with a different expression of ADHD. It’s based on my own personal experience but also other people that I have spoken to with ADHD.
As part of my research, I was in contact with a neuroscientist who specialises in child development with neurodiversity, and she told me a lot about the way the brain scans look, and that’s why brain scans are included in the content.
The content touches on things like emotional dysregulation, neurological development, and distracting thoughts. It speaks to the camaraderie between neuro-diverse people and the way that we form friendships in neuro-diverse spaces. It also speaks to the personal voice inside of the head when one’s trying to concentrate. It speaks to the way that you feel viewed a lot more by people, when you have a disability. It features echolalia as well, that’s why there is a lot of cartoon content in the piece because for me, growing up, that was my echolalia, it was based on cartoons. It was the kind of content that you will mimic.
I talked to my Mum while I was developing this installation, and she explained that, when I was growing up, there was a lack of awareness and education around neurodiversity for parents, and specifically around ADHD. Anything she knew about ADHD seemed to be centred on a belief that it was mostly young boys, misbehaving and being hyper. It was a shallow understanding that she had about that. After I was diagnosed in my 30s, she started doing a lot more research, and more things started making sense to her, about the way we developed as children. She wished there was more education for parents, or adults that have in kids in their lives, and more understanding, so that they can put tools in place for their kids to manage. I developed this installation on the back of that.
Although this art installation is personal to me, I wanted for people who have people with ADHD in their lives, to understand it more. To understand what their experience has been like.
When I presented it during my Grad Show, guidance counsellors and teachers that visited told me that it could be used as a really worthwhile teaching tool. I developed it as a general adult teaching tool, so that felt really good to hear it could also be used in that way.
Seeing the visual experience of ADHD in my art installation helped teachers fully understand what a kid might be going through; they said it was like a lightbulb moment. They said to me: ‘now I understand why some of my students can’t listen to me, it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s not that they are not trying their best, but it’s simply that they can’t, because of this overwhelming atmosphere in their head.’ It’s been really interesting for me to see the way that educators react.
To have hyper-fixations, you really dig into what you want to do, and that’s an advantage and it can really help. ADHD, creatively-speaking, is a great way to produce work.
Through my ADHD, my hyper-fixations fluctuate and change quite a lot but it means that I’ve become a jack-of-all-trades, because it means that I can flow with my hyper-fixation, from 3D to film to painting to 2D to technology and animation. ADHD lends itself to art because you can flow with the changing of your brain, and that’s a strength.
I would like this installation to have a wider audience, and personally, in the future, I would like to work in disability spaces, and do visual content to help people to understand disabilities a bit more.”
Bambi Abhainn Buchanan, originally from Scotland and now living in Wicklow, presented their Virtual Reality (VR) installation, a visual and auditory representation of ADHD, at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) Grad Show in June 2026. A deeply personal piece, Bambi channelled their experience and expertise of ADHD into this highly creative, sensorial, and multi-faceted expression of neurodiversity. The viewer puts on the VR headset and is met with a developing array of 21 screens, an intricate cacophony of meaning and emotion, light and noise.
The artwork has the potential to enlighten and support educators, parents, and expand awareness of ADHD to the general public. Bambi credits a supported training course at National Learning Network Arklow for awakening their creative impulse, before progressing to Wicklow Further Education and Training Centre and completing a degree course at NCAD. Bambi hopes to travel with the VR installation, to enable more people to explore the complexity, beauty, and individuality of ADHD.
