Professionally over the last 10 years Qona Rankin has been working with dyslexic and dyspraxic art and design students. Apart from the obvious difficulties with short-term memory, reading, writing and organisation, a significant number of students have complained that despite having been taught drawing over a number of years they find it particularly difficult. Some have said that they feel their professional practice is severely compromised by their perceived inability to ‘draw well’ in front of business associates or clients.
This has resulted in an interesting research collaboration with colleagues at Swansea Metropolitan University, Middlesex University and University College London.
Qona Rankin is the Dyslexia Coordinator at the Royal College of Art, and has been since 2002 when the post was created. She has degrees in Three Dimensional Design from Kingston University and in Design Education from the RCA. Before qualifying in Adult Dyslexia Support (ADS Cert at Southbank University) in 1997, she was a senior lecturer on the Product Design degree course at the University of Hertfordshire and a freelance jewellery designer-maker.
In 2004 Qona became interested in a group of dyslexic and dyspraxic art students who were concerned that their drawing was not ‘good enough’. She made a short film that documented this anecdotal evidence. After showing the film to Christopher Kennard, then head of the Medical School at Imperial College London, she was encouraged to set up a research group with collaborators from other institutions. The group became focused within four centres: UCL, Middlesex, Swansea Met and the RCA. This collaborative group which includes an art school drawing lecturer, a coordinator of dyslexic students and psychologists, shares an interest in probing possible correlations between drawing ability and factors such as mathematical ability, personality traits and dyslexia. It extends research by gathering and analysing data generated through questionnaires and a series of drawing exercises administered to the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design cohort at the Faculty of Art and Design, Swansea Metropolitan University, and the Royal College of Art’s MA cohort. Specifically, this research explores the hypothesis that drawing ability correlates with mathematical ability, with the ultimate objective of developing inclusive strategies for the teaching of drawing.
To date this collaborative group has regularly presented papers at conferences both nationally and internationally and has published 11 of these papers. In addition Qona has independently contributed three chapters about her work at the RCA to recent publications concerning dyslexia.
In 2007 Qona gained her SEDA PDAF, supervising postgraduate research from the University of the Arts. In 2008 she was awarded a Fellowship of the RCA in recognition of her services to dyslexia support. Also in 2008 she set up a charity ‘Creative Mentors Foundation’, partly as a result of the research findings. The aim of this charity is to help make the arts curriculum at state secondary schools more accessible and rewarding for dyslexic and dyspraxic children. The charity trains postgraduates from art disciplines in dyslexia awareness and specialist teaching strategies, preparing them to work alongside mainstream staff teaching in arts subjects. To date six mentors have been through the training and there are currently art and design and music mentors established in both Grey Coat Hospital and St Marylebone School.