A café run by autistic people says they are now facing the possibility of choosing between closing the space and paying staff after their being told that their rent could increase by £400 a month. The director of the Aubergine Café, Selena Caemawr, set up the organisation after she said she hit “rock bottom”. After she was diagnosed with autism in 2016 she struggled to hold down jobs for long periods of time due to employers not fully understanding.
“I thought: ‘I’m not cut out for the workplace, I’m not meant to be in employment. It just goes wrong every time,’” she said. “I got really quite unwell and I became homeless. I was sleeping on a boat with a damp mattress in the winter and it was horrible.” Selena, who has lived in Cardiff since 2005, came up with the idea for the Aubergine Café in 2018 and began to apply for funding. After starting out as a pop-up the business moved to its current location in 2019 and transformed the space in Clare Street to the café it is today.
It has adjustable lighting and arranged seating areas to cater to people's needs. As autistic people sometimes suffer with sensory issues the café operates with an almost silent coffee machine and doesn't organise cutlery while open. “I don’t think that the world’s ready just yet to make things autism-friendly everywhere but maybe that’s because they don’t have the right role models,” Selena said. “I thought: ‘Let’s just do it for ourselves.’ If people are not going to be able to provide the services for us let’s do it for ourselves.”
