Skip to main content
Illustration

Alice Kell

Hello! 

I am an Illustrator, animator, and workshop facilitator based in London. From a young age, I was a reluctant reader, had a poor working memory and found aspects of school incredibly difficult, so it was no surprise when I was diagnosed as dyslexic by the age of seven. My practice focuses on using visual communication to nurture a greater understanding and community around neurodiversity. 

I am dedicated to: 

  • Developing inclusive teaching methods, based on my own experience of having to learn differently from my peers.
  • Socially engaged practice.
  • Constant observation informing my image-making.


Alice Kell facilitating The Reading Room Workshop at the Wellcome Collection

My practice focuses on using visual communication to nurture a greater understanding and community around neurodiversity in educational spaces. I see illustration as my toolkit to enact positive social change. Enabling access through simplistic and direct means is very important to my work. I use modes of image making such as drawing, publication, animation/moving image blended with activity based practice like workshops and community engagement. Spatial and movement-based elements of interaction have become fundamental to my practice.


Drawings of dyslexic students working  in Secondary Schools.
Drawings of dyslexic students working in Secondary Schools.
Drawings of neurodivergent participants during Neurodiverse Society workshops.
Drawings of neurodivergent participants during Neurodiverse Society workshops.
Hand observations.
Hand observations.

I believe strongly in the power of using drawing as a thinking method rather than a final outcome. I've employed my skills as an illustrator to record body language and movements of neurodiverse participants. I used this as a method not only to record workshops I've run, but as a resource to understand external processing behaviours of a variety of neurodivergent participants.


Medium:

Pencil on paper
Over the past year, I have been running workshops in secondary schools across London that encourages participants, aged 12 to 16 to visualise their dyslexia as a hybrid animal. The workshops were an e
Over the past year, I have been running workshops in secondary schools across London that encourages participants, aged 12 to 16 to visualise their dyslexia as a hybrid animal. The workshops were an enriching experience that opened up a safe space for students to discuss what to have dyslexia in school today. It helped them articulate their experiences through visual and engaging means. These outcomes from the workshops will go towards a publication that will be circulated back to the participating schools.
Dyslexia and Image, media item 1
Dyslexia and Image, media item 1

My project aims to empower dyslexic students who are neglected by the school system. This project was inspired by my own experience of education as someone with dyslexia. I have been running workshops in secondary schools across London that encourages participants, aged twelve to sixteen to visualise their dyslexia as a hybrid animal. These outcomes are going into a publication and activity pack that will be circulated back to the participating schools. This project aims to establish community among dyslexic students and educate their neurotypical peers.

I worked closely with the special educational needs (SEN) members of staff at each of the schools to select the students for the workshop. The contents of the publication and activity pack are entirely created by the participants. I merely facilitated the workshop and gave them prompts. These prompts included questions like, are you an auditory learner? This helped them along to define characteristics of their dyslexia in a visual way. I also sat in on one on one lessons with certain participants to record their body language through drawing. This helped me understand the participants relationship with education better.

This is an ongoing project that is aiming to be finished for September 2022.



Material Reasoning
Interconnected Reasoning
Narrative Reasoning
Dynamic Reasoning

Initially my practice addressed the lack of neurodiverse representation in the Wellcome Collection. After working closely with representatives from The Wellcome on this, I was invited to create a workshop for their staff based on my experience of accessing the archives as someone with dyslexia. The workshop was held in The Wellcome Collection and invited the staff to 'read' the space through a dyslexic lens. Each animation depicts a task that invited participants to employ an aspect of dyslexic reasoning.

The framework of the workshop was influenced by the book The Dyslexic Advantage. Not only has this book been important to my own understanding of dyslexia over the years, it outlines four fundamental skills dyslexic people are better at than those who are neurotypical. It uses the acronym MIND, which stands for Material, Interconnected, Narrative and Dynamic reasoning. This felt like a good framework for the workshop because it celebrated what dyslexic people do well but also would make participants reflect on how academic spaces can be excluding to people with dyslexia.


Medium:

Workshop
Please visit our website to see more about the project.
Launch Project
Please visit our website to see more about the project.

A group of Royal College of Art and PhD students from Kings College London and I are working together to develop a framework to facilitate a knowledge exchange between the cardiovascular health researchers and British Heart Foundation fundraisers. Our outcome will be a workshop that enables scientists to visually describe their journey into science using handmade stamps. These outcomes will then be shown to secondary schools close to the hospital. This collaboration has been an incredibly rich and informative exercise in how to facilitate a multidirectional conversation across different disciplines.

In collaboration with: Daniela Perez, Andrea Sisó, & Amy Hang

Special thanks to: Hannah Green


Medium:

Workshop
The Neurodiverse Society , Publication
Launch Project

In order to celebrate all the amazing work that has come out of the Neurodiverse Society this academic year, I have made a limited edition publication. It includes work from Visualising Neurodiversity, Service Design for Autism and Across RCA.

Available for purchase via RCA show 2022

Medium:

Publication

Size:

A5

The Varley Award