For Mentors

One of the reasons that I was interested in becoming a part of the Creative Mentor scheme was to be able to work with and encourage children that might find some difficulty in their education. Like a lot of people who attended school in the 70s and 80s dyslexia wasn’t on the radar in fact it wasn’t even in the vocabulary, well not in Dunblane or Callender.

My overriding memory of school boils down to my first day at a new school, McLaren High School (in Callender). I was just starting 3rd year so would have been about 14. I was sitting at the back of an English class trying to be invisible when a girl came into the class and handed the teacher a note. The teacher then turned to the class and said “Stuart McCaffer this is your two periods of remedial”. Remedial was, for those who have never encountered it, a place where all the ‘slow’ ‘thick’ ‘Joey’ ‘dunces’ were put. All I remember doing was learning to spell lists of words, which by the end of the day I had completely forgotten. Up until that point I had been a keen if not brilliant student with quite good grades but the stigma from this moment meant I no longer cared about school or my education. It took me along time to get over the chip on my shoulder and it was to be about twenty years before I would dip my toe back into the educational system.

In my first year at Edinburgh College of Art I was diagnosed as dyslexic. The help I have received from both Edinburgh (where I graduated in 2004 with a 1st ) and subsequently the Royal College has been invaluable. So when Qona first asked me if I would like to be a Creative Mentor I was only too happy to get involved. My hope is that I will be able to, in some way engage with the children and show that drawing, painting, sculpture and expressing themselves through art can be used as a gateway to the opening up of their communication with the world. Well that and spell-check.

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Stuart McCaffer January 2011

Music is perhaps the most challenging of all the arts for a dyslexic or dyspraxic student. Musical notation is a language in its own right, and one in which many of the signs and symbols instruct more than one function. For example, the simple line can be used vertically or horizontally; it can differ in size and length and can be straight or curved, each having its own meaning and function. Its significance can differ specifically within the context of other surrounding symbols, and within the context of the musical work’s style and repertoire. For aspiring young musicians with visual discrimination issues , reading music may pose a potential difficulty. From my own experience both personally and as a teacher I have found; separating the musical components on page into manageable chunks by devising practice journals, practicing fingering away from the piano or using colour to indicate certain symbolism are but few ways to make music reading more accessible.

Notation aside, music is often considered as a multi-sensory art form in which the student needs to look, listen, touch, manipulate hand eye co-ordination/and or aural co-ordination, posture and organisation.  Despite the challenges dyslexics or dyspraxics face in this area, we seem to have an affinity to create and produce the most outstanding contributions with admirable resourcefulness and ingenuity.
From an early age I have always excelled in music and from the age of 7 I began to learn the piano. It was at the age of 16 I discovered my love of music-making and contemporary music, which drove me to pursue a career as a composer. It was also at this age I was diagnosed with having dyslexia and dyspraxia.

Throughout my school life, I have always struggled academically. Every school report from play-school to year 11 said, “easily distracted, poor organisation, lazy, must try harder”, but the schools always failed to ask “why?” My parents spotted the hallmarks of dyslexia but the schools decided not to investigate insisting they where acts of attention seeking and bad behaviour. My high-school persistently told me to stop messing around with music because I will never make it, and was even told by a charming science teacher “the only place I would end up is jail”. In truth, I grew up through school very angry and frustrated not understanding why I was always drifting in the land of mediocrity despite working and studying as hard as everyone else. However, despite my frustrations I always turned to music, which I found a natural affinity for.

Once I was diagnosed as having visual discrimination problems I started lessons with an incredible teacher who helped me to put in place strategies to assist me both academically and musically. Throughout my journey as a composer, I have found that these strategies have strongly influenced my pre-composition process. Sketching in pictorial forms has helped me define shape, gesture and form in my music, whereas a “hybrid mind mapping/musical notation diagrams” has helped me organise pitch and harmonic material. I strongly believe that dyslexia has become one of the key components defining me as a composer.

I have always wanted to work with aspiring dyslexic and dypraxic musicians. The Creative mentors foundations has presented me with a fantastic opportunity to take a little time aside from my work as an active composer, to train, improve and give back my skills to those wishing to pursue a career or interest in music.

Steven Laurence Frew September 2011

My earliest memory of feeling like the odd one out was my first ballet class. As we stood in a line the teacher gave a series of instructions but I kept getting confused. Desperately I would look at her movements to follow. Every time she lifted a leg and we had to copy I would panic – no matter how hard I tried I kept lifting the wrong leg! I could see everyone giggling as the teacher got more irate! After the lesson she told my mother never to bring me back. I remember not being able to explain that I didn’t do this on purpose. There were many things that happened like this, such as not following the margin on the page, drifting far from the point in conversation, regularly getting lost. I was tested for dyslexia when I was 20 in my first year at University. Although I’d already devised some truly ingenious ways of organizing and remembering things, it gave my confidence a huge boost to realise I just have a different way of working and seeing things. At this point I was assigned a tutor to help me with my dyslexia. - Sherrell encouraged my ideas; teaching me how to present them on paper and in person so that I could communicate them effectively. I went on to achieve a 1st and several innovation awards. My dyslexia has proven to be a huge advantage to me working in visual arts rather than a disability. I want to be a Mentor so that I can offer support in choosing another direction, to stand out from the crowd, to encourage different paths to success. Following my own experience, I trust that each confident step a dyslexic child makes is a step towards sharing an array of exciting possibilities and creative potential with the wider world. I hope to inspire children to feel delighted and be rewarded for being the odd one out!

Nienke Van Wijk

It was during my MA Architecture degree show at the Royal College of Art in the summer of 2011 when Qona approached me about my work, interested in what my plans were for the future. In reply, I stressed that the thought of full-time architecture practice was something I didn’t want to rush into, with an aim of exploring various avenues in life. Continuing with constructing workshops within local communities and for learners that want to get into art, design and architecture was a path that I wanted to explore further.

Doing this in the past with “The Stephen Lawrence Trust” and “Architecture For Everyone” around London, started my passion for supporting and mentoring those who wanted to achieve personal goals within art and design, yet felt disadvantaged when trying to do so, whether it was because of financial circumstances or academic difficulties. Working as part of the team at the Creative Mentors Foundation would give me the perfect opportunity to continue to guide and advise pupils and potential future artists and designers, and teach them that with hard work and perseverance, anything is achievable, no matter what hardship you are in.

Less than a year before my final show at the RCA, I had my first meeting with Qona and initial experience of having a tutorial as a dyslexic when writing my dissertation. As I hadn’t been tested or diagnosed with dyslexia for 24 years of my life, one could say this is an unusual situation, as most dyslexic problems in people are picked up earlier in their lives. It wasn’t until my dissertation tutor asked me if I had ever been for a test that my dyslexia was uncovered.

True to this, my experience of dyslexia has been an odd one, as it has always been there, but never at the forefront of my mind as I had never known about it. Suddenly, there was a logical explanation as to why for years throughout school and studies I could read pages of books and couldn’t remember anything that I read, having to take notes all the time and focus extremely hard to concentrate, and why I understood and took so easily to shapes and spaces rather than words.

For me, it is exactly this that I find intriguing and love to work with learners that have dyslexia and dyspraxia. Helping them to understand that just because they may have what is deemed to be a learning difficulty, actually, you are no different to other pupils and can achieve your ambitions regardless of complexities occurring in your life.

Tomasz Crompton