They are playing Minecraft, the worldwide gaming phenomenon based on the sandbox idea, where a world can be built and explored with basic blocks and there are no rules as to what can be created, whether they are houses or entire terrains.

For these students, the freedom to have a space to create and interact is a special privilege. Diagnosed with various levels of autism, the ability to share a collective world frees them from the dissociative aspects that being on the spectrum can give them. 

Tamara Wighton is an applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapist with Implexa, a multidisciplinary team offering health and developmental services to children across Ballarat.

She runs the Minecraft school holiday program, which encourages the children to engage on such personal skills as self-management, collaboration and problem-solving.

“It’s a world where you can go and live and build and collect things. We use the creative mode, where you build and work on group activities together,” Ms Wighton said.

“It’s a social skills program, so we focus on supporting the children in asking one-another questions, working on group activities within the game and identifying emotions.”

Ms Wighton says the children’s animated conversations while playing the game can be in marked contrast to their behaviour in other situations.

She says some of them are quite isolated, and it is only when their parents bring them to the Minecraft course do they feel comfortable.

“It builds their confidence. In a schoolyard they might not be confident enough to go up to others, but here they know each other.”

The course caters for upper and lower primary as well as some lower high school students, and the groups can be mixed.

“We think it’s good to put some of the older kids in an authority position, so others can look up to them.”