On the street · a classroom, with its garden doors open

An example classroom for trainee teachers

Cavendish Primary Classroom

A mainstream primary classroom for a class of thirty, set up the Cavendish Space way: the room changes, never the child.

You are looking at the room from the height of a child of seven: the tables and the shelf are at your eyes, and the garden is at your height through the doors. Nobody is drawn, because the room is set up for whoever comes in. It is one example classroom inside a whole school set up the same way, and it is built for children who need less and children who need more: caves and a dimmer for sensory avoiders, a movement corner and the garden for sensory seekers. The lamps start off; the settings under the picture are the ones the class has, and nothing in the room moves when you change them.

Walk into this classroom in 3D on Cel Street → It opens in a VR headset too, with every setting on the headset’s panel.

What this room is for

This is an example for people training to teach: a mainstream primary classroom for a class of thirty, set up so that the room does the adjusting, and every choice in it written down with the reason and the source. It is not a specification and it is not the only right answer. Take it into your placement and argue with it.

It is built on the Cavendish Space Project, a free deck of picture cards, a way of zoning a room, and the model behind both, made by Stimpunks Foundation with Helen Edgar at Autistic Realms. Everything there is free to use, print and adapt.

Go to cavendish.space →

“you meet a need by shaping the surroundings, not by changing the person.”
Cavendish Space, The space

Five places in one room

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.

Cavendish Space zones a room into places, so that anybody can move to the one that fits how they are right now. The cave, the campfire and the watering hole are David Thornburg’s primordial learning spaces; the library and the habitat complete them. In a classroom of thirty they share one floor, and moving between them is a skill, never a misbehaviour. A place is somewhere you go, not something you are.

The cave
The sensory cave in the far corner, the den under the round table and the tent in the garden, for being alone, quiet and low. Headphones on the rail beside the cave.
The campfire
A small circle on the rug in the middle of the floor, a few children and the cushions, quiet enough to talk in. It is where a story is told, too.
The watering hole
The tables and the tray of loose parts: lots of people showing each other what they know, and you can join in or just listen.
The library
The low shelf of books, the picture timetable and the box of instructions everybody adds to: what we have worked out, kept where anybody can reach it.
The habitat
The whole room and the garden through the doors, which hold all the others, and which the class can change.

“If your room has no cave yet, that is the room’s job to fix.”
Cavendish Space, Place Explorers, written for children of about seven to eleven

Light the class can turn down

Daylight first, through doors glazed to the floor, with blinds for glare rather than for shutting the garden out.
Lamps on a dimmer, LED panels that do not flicker or hum, with a plate at a child’s height so the class can see what it is set to and ask for it changed.
Turned down to what the most light-sensitive child needs, and a lamp brought to whoever needs more. A child with low vision, or one who reads better in bright light, has a task lamp at their own table rather than a brighter room for everybody. Both needs are met at once, and neither child has to ask the other to give way.
The cave has its own small light, a string of warm, steady bulbs that never flash, switched from inside.
Walls left mostly bare. Three calm sheets on the pinboard, not a display on every surface.

“Dim or diffuse harsh light, and clear busy sight-lines — a plainer wall, fewer displays, a calmer view.”
Cavendish Space, Implementation

When one child needs it brighter and another needs it dimmer, that is not a problem to hide. It is the kind of thing a class can talk through together, and the manifesto below says so.

Warmth and air

A thermometer the class can see, on the same plate as the dimmer. In most schools the heating is run for the whole building, so the class cannot turn it up or down, and the page does not pretend otherwise.
What the class can change, it changes: windows and doors that open, a ceiling fan that is slow and quiet, a desk fan for one table, blinds against the sun, and a warmer corner and a cooler one, so a child can move rather than wait.
Layers allowed: a jumper on, a jumper off, a blanket in the cave, coats on outside whatever the timetable says.
Water in reach, all day, without asking.

“A layer, a fan, an open window, a warm drink.”
Cavendish Space, Implementation

Sound

Soft surfaces: a cork floor, felt on the walls, a rug and cushions, so the room does not ring.
Headphones and ear defenders on a rail by the cave, there for anybody to take, at any time, without asking and without a reason.
A quieter end of the room, away from the doors and the busy tables.
No bells, buzzers or shouted countdowns for a change of activity: a picture on the timetable and a word, said quietly.

“Turn the world down, or fill it kindly”
Cavendish Space, Implementation

Somewhere to be, for each of thirty

There are more places to be than there are children, and none of them is a reward or a punishment.

Standing desks that wind up and down, with a footrest bar to push against.
Ordinary chairs, at more than one height, and wobble stools for moving while sitting.
Floor cushions, beanbags and the rug, for working lying down, kneeling or sitting on the floor.
Low tables and high tables, a table pushed against the wall with room underneath, and a clipboard for anywhere.
Space wide enough for a wheelchair between every table, to every place, and out through the doors.
Moving is allowed. Rocking, pacing, fiddling and stimming are how bodies keep themselves ready to learn, and nobody is told to sit still.

For sensory avoiders and sensory seekers

Some children need less: less light, less noise, less touch, less going on. They have the dimmer, the headphones and the caves. Some need more: to spin, push, bounce, crash, chew or make a noise. Many need both on different days, or in the same hour. The room is built for all of them, so nobody has to give way.

A movement corner by the doors: a crash mat on the floor, a balance board, a rocking chair and a stretchy band round a chair’s legs to push a foot against.
Heavy work that is a real job: carrying the book box, stacking the chairs, watering the garden, wiping the tables.
Fidgets and chew tools in a basket anybody can dip into, and their own kept for them if they have one.
Loud and fast belongs outside: running, swinging, climbing, shouting and banging a drum in the garden, at any time in the day, not only at break.

When the room is small

Not every classroom has the floor for a movement corner and three caves, and thirty children fill a room fast. What matters is that every child can reach each kind of place, not that every room holds all of them.

Keep the small things in every room: headphones on a hook, a basket of fidgets, a wobble cushion on a chair, a stretchy band on a chair’s legs, a lamp turned down, and one nook, even if it is only the space under a table with a cloth over it.
Share the big things between classes: a movement space in the hall, a wide corridor or a spare room, with the crash mat, the balance boards and room to spin and push; and a quiet room off the corridor for caves.
Use outdoors: the playground, the field and the garden hold what no classroom can, a trim trail, a swing, a den, a place to run and shout, and a quiet corner under a tree.
Make getting there easy: a known route, a card or a signal that means “I am going to the movement space”, a grown-up who knows, and no need to explain or wait until break.
The same rules travel with them: chosen, never a reward or a punishment, never locked, and open to anybody.

“Students must be free to be neurodivergent, to act neurodivergent, to look and sound neurodivergent.”
Nick Walker, Neuroqueer Heresies (2021), pp. 152–153, as our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Manifesto quotes it

The sensory cave

The one dark place in the room: a cloth over a frame in the far corner, with cushions, a beanbag, a blanket and a string of small lights switched from inside. Anybody can go in, at any time, and come out when they are ready. Nobody is sent there and nobody is fetched out.

It is never a time-out, never a consequence and never a place to put a child who is upset. A child who goes in has done something sensible.
It is never locked and never shut, and a grown-up can always see that it is safe without looking in.
It is somewhere to go before things get too much, not only after. Going in early is the point.
One cave is not enough for thirty. This room has a second one, a den under the round table by the shelf with a cloth hung over it, and a small tent in the garden. A child may have a cave of their own, with their own comfort things in it.
The edges become caves too: a corner, the far side of the shelf, a screen, headphones at your own desk.

“A retreat, never a time-out.” “a sensory space is never containment or seclusion.”
Cavendish Space, Implementation

The whole school: caves, campfires and watering holes

This classroom is one example, and a roomy one. Where a classroom is small, the bigger places below do its work. A child spends the day all over the school, and the same five places belong in every part of it, indoors and out. Our chapter on neuroqueer learning spaces calls for caves, campfires and watering holes in every setting, and for younger children an open flow between indoors and outdoors. Most schools already have the places, and none of them needs building.

Caves: somewhere to be alone and low

The library: a reading nook behind the shelves, a beanbag in a corner, a den made of book boxes. It is already a quiet place, and the library is one of Cavendish Space’s five.
A quiet room off the corridor, with a soft chair and low light, used by choice. It is never locked, never a seclusion room, and never where a child is sent.
The music room’s practice rooms or a small group room when it is free: a door that closes softly, and a window in it.
The hall: a corner behind a screen or the edge of the stage during assemblies, so a child can be there without being in the middle of it.
The dining hall: a quiet table at the edge, or lunch in the classroom with a friend, instead of a loud room at the busiest time of day.
The playground: a quiet zone at break with a bench and a roof, a willow den, a sensory garden, a reading shed, a tent, and the trees.
Somewhere near a trusted grown-up, such as a chair by the office or the nurture room, for a child who settles best near a person rather than alone.
A cave you carry: headphones, a hood, a fidget, a book. The cave is where the quiet is, not only a place.
A cave for the grown-ups, because staff are regulating all day too, and a calm adult is the best thing a dysregulated child can be near.

Campfires: a small circle, quiet enough to talk in

A story corner in the library, a rug and a few cushions, where a grown-up or a child reads aloud.
A small group room with a circle of chairs and beanbags, for a few children working with one adult.
The nurture room’s table at breakfast or snack time, the same faces every day.
A circle of logs in the outdoor classroom, and at forest school a real fire with grown-ups, the oldest campfire there is.
A lunchtime club in a classroom: chess, building, drawing or somebody’s special interest, small and chosen.
A bench circle in the playground, under a tree, for a few friends to talk.

Watering holes: lots of people, join in or just listen

The playground and the field, with something for everybody: climbing, swinging, running, sand, water, and a quiet bench at the edge.
The library at lunchtime, open to anybody, to read, talk or swap what you know.
An art room or maker space open at lunch, with loose parts and materials to share.
The school garden or allotment, where children dig, water and grow alongside each other.
The hall on a wet day, with a quiet edge and a busy middle.
A corridor wall where children add what they have found out, the library on the move.

In every one, a child can drift in, stay at the edge, or leave when they have had enough, and nobody asks why.

The library and the habitat, school-wide

The school’s library holds what everybody has worked out, and the box of instructions goes school-wide: where the caves are, how the day runs, what to do when something changes.
The habitat is the whole building: corridors with quiet routes and no bells, signs in symbols and words, soft light and no flicker anywhere, changes warned of before they happen, and a door to the outside from every classroom that can have one.

The same rules hold everywhere: chosen and never imposed, never locked, in sight of an adult without being watched, and never taken away as a consequence. A map of the school’s caves, campfires and watering holes on the classroom wall, in words and pictures, tells every child where they can go.

A flexible, interest-led day

A room that changes needs a day that can bend too. The anchors stay fixed (arriving, lunch, going home) so the day is predictable, and the middle flexes around the children. The times are roughly, and the picture timetable on the wall shows the order, not the clock.

An example day: roughly when, what happens, and how it flexes
Roughly	What happens	How it flexes
8:30–9:00	Soft start: arrive any time in the half hour and settle in any place, with breakfast at the nurture table.	The register is taken quietly as children settle.
9:00–9:15	Campfire: plan the day together on the picture timetable, and each child picks where to start.	Join from the rug, a cushion, the edge, or listen from a cave.
9:15–10:30	Learning block: maths or literacy, taught in short parts with choices of how to work and how to show it.	At a table, a standing desk, on the floor or outside; breaks taken when needed, never earned.
10:30–10:50	Watering hole outside: play, run, climb, or sit on the quiet bench.	The caves stay open.
10:50–12:00	Interest-led project: a question a child or a small group chose, linked to the term’s theme, in the maker space, the library or the garden.	Deep focus is protected: nobody is moved on mid-flow.
12:00–13:00	Lunch and play: the dining hall, a quiet table, or the classroom with a friend; a club or the playground.	Eat and play where it suits.
13:00–13:20	Quiet return: reading, audiobooks, drawing or rest.	Lamps low, caves open.
13:20–14:40	Learning block: science, art, music or movement, often outdoors, or more project time.	A choice of task and of what to make.
14:40–15:00	Show and share: anybody shows what they made or found, in any way, or not at all.	Showing is always optional.
15:00–15:15	Campfire close: what helped today, and what to change in the room tomorrow.	Leave from wherever you are.

Interest-led learning uses a child’s passions as the way into the curriculum rather than a reward after it. A child fascinated by trains can measure, read, write and map through trains. It builds on strengths, which is what Thomas Armstrong means by positive niche construction, and it suits monotropic attention, which goes deep into a few things at a time. Changes to the day are warned about in advance, in words and pictures, and a child who needs the same order every day can have it.

Play

A tray of loose parts by the doors, with blocks under the shelf: things that can be anything, not a kit with one right answer.
Play counts. It is learning, and it is not earned, so it is never taken away as a punishment.
The play carries on outside, through the doors, in any weather.

Outdoors

Garden doors, step-free, onto a fenced garden, in sight of the room, so going out is a choice and not an expedition.
A sail over part of the garden, so a lesson, a story or a quiet minute can happen outside in sun or drizzle.
A small tent under the tree, a cave outside, and room to run, swing and climb for children who need more.
Going out to settle is a way of learning, not a way of missing it. The garden is part of the room.

“Enable free movement between spaces both indoors and outdoors.”
Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Manifesto, Ryan Boren and Helen Edgar (2024)

Technology and communication

An interactive panel on a stand that goes up and down, so it can be reached from a wheelchair or the rug, with captions on for every video. There is an essay on it to read.
Tablets with real AAC for any child who speaks with one, always in reach and never taken away. A picture card is not a substitute for somebody’s own voice.
Text-to-speech and speech-to-text for anybody, for reading and for writing.
A picture timetable on the wall and visual timers that show time passing without a beep.
Headphones on the rail, for the panel, a tablet, or nothing at all.
Signing and symbols, used by the grown-ups as well as the children: British Sign Language or a signing system such as Makaton where a child signs, symbols beside the words on the timetable and the labels, and interpreters for a Deaf child or a Deaf family.
The class’s own languages: labels and letters home in the languages the families speak, and a child’s home language welcome in the room.
Every way of talking counts: speech, signing, AAC, typing, pointing, writing, drawing and saying nothing. Not speaking is not the same as not knowing.
No behaviour points on any screen. Nothing shown to the class ranks, scores or names a child.

On the interactive whiteboard

The panel has something on it to read: From the Height of a Child, an essay by Helen Edgar and Ryan Boren about this classroom and the whole school round it, seen through Universal Design for Learning, Cavendish Space, anti-behaviourism and neuroqueer learning spaces. Scroll the board to read all of it here, or open it as a PDF for a whiteboard of your own, a tablet or the printer.

Open the essay as a PDF

From the Height of a Child: Looking Again at the Primary Classroom Through Cavendish Space

Helen Edgar and Ryan Boren · November 2026

Inspired by building the Cavendish Primary Classroom on Stimpunks.World together in November 2026, and by the chapter on neuroqueer learning spaces we have written together (Edgar & Boren, 2027). Where it says “I”, that is Helen.

Kneeling down

If you kneel on a classroom floor until your eyes are about a metre from the ground, the room changes. The tables are at your chin, the displays are a long way up, the adults are mostly legs and voices, and the door to the outside, if there is one, is the brightest thing you can see. This is the height of a child of seven, and it is the height from which we drew the Cavendish Primary Classroom, an example mainstream room for a class of thirty, built as somewhere for people training to teach to walk around in and argue with.

I come to it as a late-identified Autistic and ADHD person, a parent of neurodivergent children, and a teacher who worked for over twenty years in early years, primary and SEND settings, including with children described as having profound and multiple learning disabilities. I was trained in reward charts and sanctions, and I used them before I knew better. So this is not a neutral review. I helped to make the room, and I want to look at it honestly from four directions: Universal Design for Learning, Cavendish Space, anti-behaviourism and neuroqueer learning spaces. What can each of them see from down here, and what might each of them miss?

What is in the room, and what if the room is small?

The room has garden doors glazed to the floor, lamps on a dimmer that start switched off, blinds, a fan, and walls left mostly bare. There are standing desks, ordinary chairs, wobble stools, beanbags and floor cushions, so that there are more places to be than there are children. There are three caves: a cloth over a frame in the far corner, a den under a table and a small tent in the garden. There is a movement corner with a crash mat, a balance board and a rocking chair. Nobody is drawn in it, because it is set up for whoever comes in.

It is a roomy example, and most classrooms are not roomy. Thirty children fill a room quickly, and I do not think the answer is guilt about floor space. What matters is that every child can reach each kind of place, not that every room holds all of them. The small things can live in every classroom: headphones on a hook, a basket of fidgets, a wobble cushion, a lamp turned down, one nook under a table. The big things can be shared in the hall, a wide corridor, a spare room or outdoors, as long as getting there is easy and nobody has to explain themselves or wait until break.

What Universal Design for Learning can see

Universal design began in architecture, as design that is “usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” (Center for Universal Design, 1997). Universal Design for Learning carries that into teaching, and CAST (2024) asks for multiple means of engagement, of representation, and of action and expression. From a child’s height the room does well by this. Light, sound, seating and place can all be changed, the timetable is in pictures as well as words, captions are on, signing and symbols sit beside speech, and nothing that helps is kept back for children with a label.

There is some research to stand on, and I want to be careful with it. Barrett et al. (2015) studied 153 primary classrooms in England and report that “seven key design parameters have been identified that together explain 16% of the variation in pupils’ academic progress achieved” (p. 118): light, temperature, air quality, ownership, flexibility, complexity and colour. That figure is a share of the range of progress across the classrooms they measured, not a promise about any one room, and the stimulation they recommend is an appropriate level, not the lowest possible, which is a caution against stripping a room bare. Fisher et al. (2014) found that kindergarten children “spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed” (p. 1362), but that was a laboratory classroom, and neither study was about Autistic children.

The evidence for UDL itself is modest. Capp (2017) concluded that it improves the process of learning while an effect on outcomes had not yet been shown, and King-Sears et al. (2023) later found a moderate positive effect on achievement across twenty controlled studies, while Boysen (2024) compares it uncomfortably with learning styles. Flexible seating is thinner still: Attai et al. (2021) found more satisfaction and autonomy and did not report attainment, and Bluteau et al. (2022) found mixed effects on wellbeing. So I do not think we can honestly say this room will raise attainment. I think we can say it widens the ways in. What UDL cannot easily see is who holds the controls, because it is usually something a teacher designs for children, and Hamraie (2017) reminds us that there is a politics to who the “universal” user is imagined to be.

What Cavendish Space can see

Cavendish Space starts from that question. Its shortest version is that “you meet a need by shaping the surroundings, not by changing the person” (Cavendish Space, n.d.-d), and it zones a room into five places: the cave, the campfire and the watering hole, which are Thornburg’s (2014) primordial learning spaces, and the library and the habitat, which complete them. In this room the caves are for being alone and low, the campfire is a small circle on the rug, the watering hole is the tables and the tray of loose parts, the library is the shelf and the picture timetable, and the habitat is the whole room and its garden.

It is also where the room meets sensory difference most directly. Dunn (1997) describes seeking and avoiding as patterns of responding, not kinds of child, and the same child may seek movement and avoid noise within the same hour. The first version of this room was dim, soft and quiet, which suits a child who is overwhelmed and leaves out a child whose bodymind needs more, so the movement corner, the heavy jobs, the chew tools and the garden were added for them. Sensory experience shapes school life for Autistic pupils: Ashburner et al. (2008) found associations between sensory processing and classroom outcomes in a small sample, the parents and teachers in Jones et al. (2020) described distraction and distress, and the young people who spoke with Goodall (2018) described mainstream school as hostile to their senses and asked for simple changes. Mostafa (2014) offers design principles that point the same way. Stimming belongs here too. Autistic adults told Kapp et al. (2019) that it regulates them and that they object to having it trained away, and I have written about it as an embodied sensory language (Edgar, 2026a).

The ethics matter as much as the furniture. A card lies face down until a child turns it, because “The turn is the consent” (Cavendish Space, n.d.-e), and “Nothing here sorts a child. Everything here sorts the room” (Cavendish Space, n.d.-c). The risk I can see from the floor is capture. A cave becomes a time-out the moment an adult sends a child into it, and a crash mat becomes a reward the moment it has to be earned. The furniture cannot prevent that. Only the adults can.

What anti-behaviourism refuses

This is why the room carries a list of things it will not do: no “behaviour” chart, no traffic lights, no taking away play, breaks, the garden or the cave, no rewards for sitting still or looking at the speaker, and no asking permission to drink, move or go to the toilet. The cave is “A retreat, never a time-out” (Cavendish Space, n.d.-a).

Kohn (1993) set out the case against rewards decades ago, and Deci et al. (1999), in a meta-analysis of 128 experiments, found that expected tangible rewards reduced intrinsic motivation, with stronger effects for children. Those were mostly experiments and not classrooms, so I hold them carefully, but they sit beside self-determination theory, in which autonomy, competence and relatedness are needs to be met and not privileges to be earned (Ryan & Deci, 2000). For Autistic children the stakes are higher. Walker (2021, as quoted in Boren & Edgar, 2024) describes freedom of embodiment as an essential element of cognitive liberty, and I have written elsewhere that compliance is not connection (Edgar, 2025a) and that teacher training still leans on behaviourist compliance (Adkin & Edgar, 2025). Stimpunks keeps a growing library of the research on this (Stimpunks Foundation, n.d.).

What the room cannot do is remove behaviourism from a school. A classroom like this inside a school with a points system, public sanctions and attendance rewards is a cave in a storm. Interest-led learning can be captured too, when a child’s passion becomes leverage, something offered after the “real” work, and I have argued that interest-led is not enough without an understanding of monotropism (Edgar, 2025b). So an honest appraisal has to look at the school’s policy as closely as the room’s design.

What neuroqueering asks of us

Neuroqueer learning spaces ask for something more unsettling than good design. Walker (2021, as quoted in Boren & Edgar, 2024) writes that “The classroom must be declared a zone of freedom from the dominant culture’s pervasive requirement that everyone strive to constantly perform neuronormativity” (pp. 152–153), and that conflicts between access needs “should be negotiated in class as part of the learning process” (p. 152). The room makes space for that. When one child needs the lamps up and another needs them down, the answer is a task lamp, a different place and a conversation, not a rule.

Yet a room designed by two adults is still designed by adults. Neuroqueering is a practice, not a floor plan, and I worry about the day a “Cavendish classroom” becomes a checklist, a new “normal” to be inspected. In our chapter we describe the Neuroqueer Space Holder, an adult who is trusted one to one, keeps the whole group safe and co-regulates instead of controlling (Edgar & Boren, 2027), and I think regulation grows from those relationships more than from any corner of a room (Edgar, 2026b). Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005) and the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) are theories that are true to my own life, and there is growing evidence for the second (Crompton et al., 2020), but the people who should be shaping this room are the children in it. Fletcher-Watson et al. (2019) make that case for research, and I think it holds for classrooms.

A day that bends

A room that changes needs a day that can bend. The anchors stay fixed so that the day is predictable, and the middle flexes around the children. This is one example, and the times are approximate.

Roughly	What happens	How it flexes
8:30–9:00	Soft start: arrive and settle in any place	The register is taken quietly
9:00–9:15	Campfire: plan the day on the picture timetable	Join from the rug, the edge or a cave
9:15–10:30	Learning block, with choices of how to work and how to show it	Breaks taken when needed, never earned
10:30–10:50	Watering hole outdoors	The caves stay open
10:50–12:00	Interest-led project time	Nobody is moved on mid-flow
12:00–13:20	Lunch, play and a quiet return	A quiet table, or the classroom with a friend
13:20–14:40	Learning block, often outdoors, or more project time	A choice of task
14:40–15:15	Show and share, then a campfire close	Showing is always optional

Interest-led time follows what I have called the wandering line, which may be the learning itself (Edgar, 2026d), and monotropic attention needs long, unbroken stretches to find flow and wonder (Edgar, 2026c). A flexible day is not a looser day for every child. Some children need the same order every day, and choice can itself be a demand, so changes are warned of in words and pictures and sameness is always on offer.

The whole school as habitat

One classroom is only one example. Children spend their days in corridors, halls, dining rooms and playgrounds, and our chapter asks for caves, campfires and watering holes everywhere, indoors and out (Edgar & Boren, 2027). Most schools already have them. A cave might be a nook behind the library shelves, a quiet room off the corridor that is never locked and never a place a child is sent, the edge of the hall during assembly, a willow den or a bench under a tree. A campfire might be a story corner, a small group room, the nurture room’s table, a lunchtime club or a circle of logs at forest school. A watering hole might be the playground, the library at lunchtime, an art room left open or the school garden.

Nair et al. (2009) wrote about solitude as the place where learning is taken in, and McGoldrick et al. (2025) have carried the Autistic SPACE framework into schools. The habitat is then the whole building: quiet routes, no bells, soft light, signs in symbols, staff who have a cave of their own, and a door to the outside wherever one can be had.

What I am still wondering

This is a design argument and not an evaluation. Nobody has measured what happens to children in this room, most of the studies I have leaned on were not about Autistic pupils, and several of the ideas are theories or lived knowledge, not trial findings. I think that is an honest place to begin as long as we say so. I wonder what children would change first. I wonder how belonging, attendance, distress and joy would look after a year, in the children’s own words and ways of communicating. I wonder how much of this survives a curriculum and an inspection system that still ask for stillness and sameness, and what teachers need in order to hold it.

Getting back up

When I get up off the floor, the room looks ordinary again, and I think that is the point. Nothing in it is expensive or new: a cloth over a table, a lamp turned down, a mat in a corner, a door left open, a day with room in it. Universal Design for Learning widens the ways in, Cavendish Space hands over the dial, anti-behaviourism refuses to make any of it conditional, and neuroqueering asks us to keep unlearning what a classroom is for. “Regulation comes before instruction. Environment is curriculum” (Cavendish Space, n.d.-e).

We need schools where every child, whether their bodymind needs less or more, can find a place that fits without having to earn it or explain it. The cards, the guidebooks and Place Explorers are free at cavendish.space. I hope you kneel down in your own room this week and see what is there.

References

Adkin, T., & Edgar, H. (2025, March 24). Neuro-affirming research in practice: Supporting Autistic students, embracing monotropism in the classroom and beyond. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/neuro-affirming-research-in-practice-supporting-autistic-students-embracing-monotropism-in-the-classroom-and-beyond/
Ashburner, J., Ziviani, J., & Rodger, S. (2008). Sensory processing and classroom emotional, behavioral, and educational outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 62(5), 564–573. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.62.5.564
Attai, S. L., Reyes, J. C., Davis, J. L., York, J., Ranney, K., & Hyde, T. W. (2021). Investigating the impact of flexible furniture in the elementary classroom. Learning Environments Research, 24(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-020-09322-1
Barrett, P., Davies, F., Zhang, Y., & Barrett, L. (2015). The impact of classroom design on pupils’ learning: Final results of a holistic, multi-level analysis. Building and Environment, 89, 118–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2015.02.013
Bluteau, J., Aubenas, S., & Dufour, F. (2022). Influence of flexible classroom seating on the wellbeing and mental health of upper elementary school students: A gender analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 821227. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.821227
Boren, R., & Edgar, H. (2024, May 11). Neuroqueer learning spaces manifesto. Stimpunks Foundation. https://stimpunks.org/projects/neuroqueer-learning-spaces/manifesto/
Boysen, G. A. (2024). Lessons (not) learned: The troubling similarities between learning styles and universal design for learning. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 10(2), 207–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000280
Capp, M. J. (2017). The effectiveness of universal design for learning: A meta-analysis of literature between 2013 and 2016. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 21(8), 791–807. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2017.1325074
CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning guidelines (Version 3.0). https://udlguidelines.cast.org
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Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Williams, C. V. M., Flynn, E. G., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020). Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective. Autism, 24(7), 1704–1712. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320919286
Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627
Dunn, W. (1997). The impact of sensory processing abilities on the daily lives of young children and their families: A conceptual model. Infants & Young Children, 9(4), 23–35. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001163-199704000-00005
Edgar, H. (2025a, August 2). Why PBS is harmful for Autistic and neurodivergent young people. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/why-pbs-is-harmful-for-autistic-and-neurodivergent-young-people/
Edgar, H. (2025b, October 12). Why “interest-led” isn’t enough: Embracing monotropism & neuro-affirming practice. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/why-interest-led-isnt-enough-embracing-monotropism-neuro-affirming-practice/
Edgar, H. (2026a, January 25). Stimming as embodied sensory language. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/stimming-as-embodied-sensory-language/
Edgar, H. (2026b, May 14). Building neurodivergent-affirming cultures of regulation: Reflections from a Cavendish Space workshop. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/building-neurodivergent-affirming-cultures-of-regulation-reflections-from-a-cavendish-space-workshop/
Edgar, H. (2026c, October 11). Awe, wonder and monotropic attention in neuroqueer learning spaces. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/awe-wonder-and-monotropic-attention-in-neuroqueer-learning-spaces/
Edgar, H. (2026d, November 8). Autistic children’s learning: Deligny, desire lines and why Cavendish Space matters. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/deligny-desire-lines-cavendish-space/
Edgar, H., & Boren, R. (2027). Neuroqueer learning spaces (J. L. Barclay-Morton, Ed.). In N. Walker (Ed.), Neuroqueer theory and practice. Autonomous Press.
Fisher, A. V., Godwin, K. E., & Seltman, H. (2014). Visual environment, attention allocation, and learning in young children: When too much of a good thing may be bad. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1362–1370. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614533801
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The cards in this classroom

The Cavendish deck lies on the library shelf. A child shows how they feel and what they need by pointing at a picture or turning a card face up: no reading, no scoring, no right answer. Place Explorers is the version written for children of about seven to eleven, with a section for the grown-ups under it, and the interaction badges say, to anybody who looks, whether somebody would like to be talked to.

“The turn is the consent.”
Cavendish Space, Why

“Nothing here sorts a child. Everything here sorts the room.”
Cavendish Space, Place Explorers

Cavendish Space’s ethics, on the wall

What the project holds to, in our words, each with the page that says it. A classroom that uses the cards keeps to all of them.

The room changes, not the person. The space
Nothing is scored, recorded, ranked or diagnosed. The cards do not screen anybody. Why
The cards describe the room, never the child. Why
The child controls what they share. A card lies face down until they turn it. Implementation
The deck is not AAC and never replaces it. Not AAC
Stimming and movement are regulation, and nobody is stopped. Why
Many needs at once, including ones that clash, held in the same room. The space
Access is infrastructure, and nobody is asked for a diagnosis at the door. The space
No public shame, ever. An inclusive environment
Nothing leaves your device. The site keeps no accounts, analytics or cookies. Privacy

“Broken systems, not broken people.”
Cavendish Space, Why

What this classroom will not do

No behaviour chart, traffic light, cloud or clip chart, on the wall or on a screen.
No taking away play, breaks, the garden or the cave as a consequence.
No rewards for sitting still, looking at the speaker or hiding how you feel.
No asking permission to go to the toilet, to drink, to move or to go into the cave.
No locked or out-of-bounds toilets during lessons. An accessible, gender-neutral toilet is a few steps from the door, so going does not mean crossing the school.
No seclusion, no restraint used as a consequence, and no child shut in anywhere.
No label or diagnosis needed before something is made easier.

What the room cannot do on its own

A room is only the habitat. Cavendish Space leaves teaching and assessment to the classroom on purpose, and a behaviour policy, a timetable or a homework rule can undo everything on this page. For the room to work, the rest of the school has to agree with it:

A behaviour policy with no public shaming, no charts, and no taking away breaks, play or the cave.
Teaching with more than one way in, more than one way to take it in and more than one way to show it, which is Universal Design for Learning.
Assessment that does not need a child to sit still, look at the speaker or work in silence to be counted as having learned.
Time: transitions warned of in advance, fewer of them, and nobody hurried between places.
A grown-up who holds the space: somebody a child can trust one to one, who keeps the whole room safe and co-regulates rather than controls.
Built with the children who use it. Ask the class what helps and what hurts, with the cards and in their own ways, and change the room when they tell you.

Universal design

Universal design means building for everybody from the start rather than adding something for one child later. The Center for Universal Design at NC State put it as making things usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design, and set out seven principles in 1997. Each one is in this room:

Equitable use: the cave, the headphones and the standing desks are for anybody, not for children with a label.
Flexibility in use: lamps, blinds, seats and places to work all change, and the class changes them.
Simple and intuitive use: one plate for the dimmer and the warmth, at a child’s height, and a picture timetable.
Perceptible information: captions on, pictures beside words, timers that show time rather than beeping it.
Tolerance for error: going to the wrong place, leaving a task half done, asking again; none of it costs anything.
Low physical effort: a step-free garden door, a panel that winds down, water in reach.
Size and space for approach and use: room for a wheelchair between every table and through every door.

Universal Design for Learning carries the same idea into teaching. CAST’s guidelines ask for multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation and multiple means of action and expression: more than one way in, more than one way to take something in, and more than one way to show what you know. The places, the seats and the technology here are the room’s half of that; the teaching is yours.

“Inclusion is architecture, not goodwill.”
Cavendish Space, An inclusive environment

Neuroqueer learning spaces

Neuroqueer learning spaces are Ryan Boren and Helen Edgar’s project, after Nick Walker’s work on neuroqueer theory: places to learn that stop asking anybody to perform being typical, and that hand the room’s choices to the people in it. Their manifesto is a living document on stimpunks.org. What this classroom takes from it:

Somatic and cognitive liberty. Moving, stimming, fidgeting and resting in whatever way a body needs is part of thinking, so nothing in the room asks a child to hold still to be seen as learning.
Free movement between the places, indoors and out, and the freedom to leave the middle of something without explaining.
Clashing needs talked through together. One child’s bright is another’s too much; the class works it out in the open, with no one voice deciding for everybody.
Play that needs no reason. Open-ended materials, mess allowed, and time that does not have to produce anything.
Niche construction. The room is changed to fit the child, the way Thomas Armstrong describes it, rather than the child being changed to fit the room.
The grown-up as a space holder: somebody a child can trust one to one, who keeps the whole room safe and co-regulates rather than controls.

“The classroom must be declared a zone of freedom from the dominant culture’s pervasive requirement that everyone strive to constantly perform neuronormativity.”
Nick Walker, Neuroqueer Heresies (2021), pp. 152–153, as our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Manifesto quotes it

“Conflicts between the access needs of different individuals should be negotiated in class as part of the learning process.”
Nick Walker, Neuroqueer Heresies (2021), p. 152, as our manifesto quotes it

“Feature space for play which needs no justification or other ‘outcome.’”
Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Manifesto, under Play

What the research says about the room

Classroom design changes how much children learn. Peter Barrett and colleagues studied 153 primary classrooms in 27 schools in England and found that seven key design parameters have been identified that together explain 16% of the variation in pupils’ academic progress achieved: light, temperature, air quality, ownership, flexibility, complexity and colour. They group them as naturalness, individualisation and stimulation, the last at the right level rather than the most. The light, the warmth, the air, the seats the class can change and the calm walls here follow them.
Busy walls take attention away. Anna Fisher, Karrie Godwin and Howard Seltman taught kindergarten children science lessons in a classroom whose walls were decorated for some lessons and bare for others; the children spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed. That is why the pinboard here has three calm sheets on it.
Every child needs somewhere to be alone. Prakash Nair, Randall Fielding and Jeffery Lackney’s design patterns for schools make the case for places of solitude, where learning is taken in, and Cavendish Space credits them with the case for cave spaces in schools; David Thornburg’s cave is the same place.
Change the setting, not the child. Thomas Armstrong calls it positive niche construction, in Neurodiversity in the Classroom: shaping the surroundings around a child’s strengths. Our glossary has an entry for niche construction.
A place you own helps you think. Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind gathers the research on how people think better in spaces they can make their own.

Reading the research well

The 16% is a share of the range of progress, worked out across the classrooms Barrett and colleagues measured, not proof that changing one room will move one child’s progress by that much.
Neither study was of Autistic or neurodivergent pupils. Barrett measured all pupils; Fisher taught kindergarten children in a laboratory classroom. The case for this room rests as much on what Autistic and neurodivergent people say about their own needs.
So the best evidence for any classroom is its own children. Notice who uses which place, ask, and change the room.

To take on placement

Questions for any classroom you walk into, including your own. They are for noticing, not for marking anybody.

Where would a child go here to be on their own, without asking and without it counting against them?
Who decides how bright, how warm and how loud it is, and can the children see and ask?
How many ways are there to sit, stand, lie or move while working, and is any of them a reward?
Is there anything on the wall or a screen that ranks children where the class can see it?
Can a child get outside, to water or to the toilet, without a reason?
When two children need opposite things, how is that talked through, and who is in the conversation?

Sources

Cavendish Space Project (Stimpunks Foundation, with Helen Edgar at Autistic Realms), cavendish.space: The space, Why, Implementation, Place Explorers, An inclusive environment, badges. CC0 1.0.
Boren, R., & Edgar, H. (2024). Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Manifesto. Stimpunks Foundation.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press. Quoted here as our manifesto quotes it.
Barrett, P., Davies, F., Zhang, Y., & Barrett, L. (2015). The impact of classroom design on pupils’ learning: Final results of a holistic, multi-level analysis. Building and Environment, 89, 118–133. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2015.02.013 (open access, CC BY 4.0).
Fisher, A. V., Godwin, K. E., & Seltman, H. (2014). Visual environment, attention allocation, and learning in young children: When too much of a good thing may be bad. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1362–1370. doi:10.1177/0956797614533801
The Center for Universal Design, NC State University (1997). The Principles of Universal Design, version 2.0. Compiled by Bettye Rose Connell, Mike Jones, Ron Mace, Jim Mueller, Abir Mullick, Elaine Ostroff, Jon Sanford, Ed Steinfeld, Molly Story and Gregg Vanderheiden.
CAST (2024). CAST Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. Linked and named here, not reproduced.
Thornburg, D. (2014). From the Campfire to the Holodeck: Creating Engaging and Powerful 21st Century Learning Environments. Jossey-Bass.
Nair, P., Fielding, R., & Lackney, J. (2009). The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools (rev. ed.). DesignShare.
Armstrong, T. (2012). Neurodiversity in the Classroom: Strength-Based Strategies to Help Students with Special Needs Succeed in School and Life. ASCD.
Murphy Paul, A. (2021). The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Each source was read on its own page, its publisher’s or a library catalogue’s, on 2026-11-11; Walker’s lines were read on our own manifesto, not in the book. CAST’s guidelines are CAST’s copyright, so only the names of their three principles are given here.

Whose words these are

The brief is Helen Edgar’s, 2026-11-11: a mainstream primary classroom for a class of thirty, as an example for trainee teachers, neuroaffirming, with lighting and warmth the class can change, many kinds of seat and standing desks, a sensory cave, somewhere to play, somewhere to learn, a way outdoors and the technology a classroom has, promoting the Cavendish Space Project’s policies and ethics. The Cavendish Space Project is Stimpunks Foundation’s, made with Helen Edgar at Autistic Realms, and cavendish.space is under CC0 1.0; every line quoted from it keeps its credit, as that site asks. This page also leans on Helen Edgar and Ryan Boren’s chapter on neuroqueer learning spaces, which Autonomous Press publishes in 2027 in Nick Walker’s Neuroqueer Theory and Practice and which is not yet out, so nothing is quoted from it; the published work it draws on is in the sources above. The drawing of the classroom and the words on this page are ours, and nobody is drawn in it.

The room is also on Cel Street, where it can be walked into and opened in a VR headset, with every setting here on the headset’s panel.

The name and the headings are set in Sniglet, by Haley Fiege, with Brenda Gallo and Pablo Impallari, and every word that is read in Andika, drawn by SIL International for people learning to read, both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, read off their own records in Google Fonts’ repository.

Job marker — a pencil dropped on the classroom floor

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: What the cave is never

Before the code: In the Cavendish Primary Classroom, what is the sensory cave never?

Hint 1

It is the first thing in the list on the dark sheet.

Hint 2

Some classrooms send a child to sit somewhere apart as a consequence.

Last hint

Two words, joined by a hyphen.

Give me the answer

The answer is A time-out. The cave is never a time-out, never a consequence and never a place to put a child who is upset: a retreat, never a time-out.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: RETREAT

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →

Set the room