Creative thinkers

For some, dyslexia is associated with 'learning difficulty', 'disadvantage' or 'disability', and it only poses challenges with reading, spelling and comprehension. For young people with big imaginations, dyslexia can feel very different.

Three dyslexic young people, Josh, Rose, Joe, and their mentor Jason believe their dyslexia is much more diverse than just challenges with reading and writing. They are on a mission to change the way people see dyslexia.

About the author

Yasmin Holmes is a project manager at Junior Design Factory – a design studio for dyslexic children. Young people can find out how to join Junior Design Factory, or organisations can book workshops through the Creative Briefs website.

Josh is a 19 year-old aspiring palaeontologist. He confidently corrects me that palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life— not just dinosaurs. At the time of writing, he's taking his first driving lesson so he can drive to his job as a lifeguard at his local leisure centre. Josh has built up his confidence through learning design-skills at a dyslexia support organisation where he uses his creativity and 3D thinking in design projects. Now he's confident enough to deliver his own creative workshops to other young people at the same organisation and as part of this, he advocates for the role of arts-based learning in helping dyslexic children thrive. He actively encourages changing the language around dyslexia to something much more positive.

"When I was younger, I never expected I would be in a job like life guarding, I never imagined having the confidence to work with the general public. I'm about to start driving lessons and I just never thought I'd have the confidence to do that either."

juniordesignfactory.co.uk creativebriefs.co.uk

@BriefsNotPants

@BriefsNotPants

@BriefsNotPants until he was 35 years old and training to be a teacher that he was diagnosed as being dyslexic. Now, he is a director of a not-for-profit that supports dyslexic children like Josh, Joe, and Rose, giving them opportunities in design and creativity that he wished he'd had when he was younger.

Rose and Joe are both in secondary school, and they confidently tell me that their dyslexia makes them more creative. Despite being just young teenagers, they have already used their creative thinking skills to create large dinosaur sculptures for a museum exhibit, designed logos for local companies and even presented their own podcasts talking about dyslexia.

"I learn better when I can use my imagination. It's not just doing things like art, like painting and stuff. It's also things like being allowed to doodle my ideas—it helps me to remember things, especially at school. It also helps me talk about my ideas, so I don't forget what I want to say"

Mentor Jason Bowers has always been creative, enjoying 'hands-on' learning at school like woodwork, he worked in a shoe factory as a teenager, and then progressed to setting up his own interior design business as a young adult. It wasn't

"When I was diagnosed it was such a relief, it suddenly made sense as to why I'd struggled academically as a child. I've since found out that a huge percentage of dyslexic children are not being diagnosed, and because of that children don't need a formal diagnosis to take part in our work—everyone here is classed as a creative thinker, so we're all equal. Dyslexic kids are often creatively minded, and so they thrive when they use visual communication. I've heard it so many times from parents. 'My child can't keep up with the writing on the board, they don't write down their homework, or when they do it's not complete information'. And then they get home and are lost with what they are supposed to be doing. That's when they get into trouble at school, make excuses, and lose confidence. When children learn creative ways of working through design, they start to implement the same approaches in more academic subjects—things like drawing a mind map, bullet pointing information, taking photographs, or doing a drawing. They're a massive help to a dyslexic child".