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| B | A | C | K | G | R | O | U | N | D | _ | C | O | L | O | R |
The
Arts Dyslexia Trust |
Susan Parkinson
describes the work of the Arts Dyslexia Trust.
| Read this article in Spanish |
Many years ago, in the early sixties, I found myself in charge of a minute class
of 16-year old boys wanting to learn about “Art”, at a small independent
school. To say the class took place in a studio would be a distortion of truth.
It was, in fact, a not very waterproof cowshed with no light or equipment. Cows,
of course, have no need of either. But, dim ( in all senses of the word) as the
prospects seemed to be, I was soon to become amazed and captivated by the works
of art that emerged from this unpromising source. The truth was that this happened to be a very remarkable school run by a very remarkable head master who was one of the first to recognize dyslexia as a cause of the unexpected academic failure of several of his intelligent pupils. In those days there was little information available in this country about how to teach dyslexics - no” Code of Good Practice” - in fact, little about dyslexia at all. What there was came from America where the great Norman Geschwind was putting forward some revolutionary ideas. But we heard little of that. All of us had to learn from the boys we were “teaching”. We listened to them and looked at their way of making things, building, and solving problems, and discovered what worked for them and what didn’t. This is still, I believe the best training for a teacher. However that may be, as the school began to acquire ‘A’ levels in Art, entrances to Art Colleges, and old boys came back to show off their professional work as established artists and designers, the “cowshed” art classes spread to all the other stable buildings in the courtyard. A pottery and a forge appeared, and finally a computer section took over the old boot-shed where boys crammed in with scarcely room to breathe, enthusiastically conjuring strange graphics out of those early Sinclair's and Basic manuals. A new head master added further encouragement and some much needed funding for equipment. The evidence continued to mount, steadily. It was not of signs of disability we were seeing, but of exceptional ability in these subjects. At the end of 20 years' experience of dyslexic work in all sorts of different aspects of art, I was totally convinced that there must be a reason why a lack of facility with words should be connected with extra ability in these fields: the so-called visual-spatial ability. In 1985 I determined to find out what and why this connection should exist. This was one reason the Arts Dyslexia Trust was founded. The second, and perhaps more important reason, was that all the existing dyslexia organizations seemed to be concentrating wholly on “correcting” what was perceived as the “weaknesses” of dyslexics, not on encouraging their strengths. Expert help was badly needed in this area. Former pupils were coming back to us, sometimes after many years struggling in ill-paid jobs for which they were unsuited, to ask how could they get back into the arts. This is something the Trust could help with and continues to do so with an ever increasing Membership from all over Britain and abroad. Every year we organize exhibitions and talks to display dyslexic talent and altogether do everything we can to promote greater understanding and appreciation of minds usually labeled “dyslexic”. Please join us, if you can.
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